Statistical Engineering Division
Seminar Series
Surveillance Geoinformatics of Hotspot Detection, Prioritization,
and Early Warning
Dr. G. P. Patil
Distinguished Professor and Director,
Penn State Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental
Statistics.
Principal Investigator,
NSF Digital Government Program Grant for Surveillance
Geoinformatics.
Room 618, NIST North
October 28, 2004, 1:30-2:30 PM
Geoinformatic surveillance for spatial and temporal hotspot detection
and prioritization is a critical need for the 21st century. A hotspot
can mean an unusual phenomenon, anomaly, aberration, outbreak,
elevated cluster, or critical area. The declared need may be for
monitoring, etiology, management, or early warning. The responsible
factors may be natural, accidental or intentional, with relevance to
both infrastructure and homeland security.
This presentation describes a multi-disciplinary research project
based on novel methods and tools for hotspot detection and
prioritization, driven by a wide variety of case studies of potential
interest to several agencies. These case studies deal with critical
societal issues, such as public health, ecosystem health, biosecurity,
biosurveillance, robotic networks, social networks, sensor networks,
wireless networks, video mining, homeland security, and early warning.
Our methodology involves an innovation of the popular circle-based
spatial scan statistic methodology. In particular, it employs the
notion of an upper level set and is accordingly called the upper level
set scan statistic sytem, pointing to the next generation of a
sophisticated analytical and computational system, effective for the
detection of arbitrarily shaped hotspots along spatio-temporal
dimensions. We also propose a novel prioritization scheme based on
multiple indicator and stakeholder criteria without having to
integrate indicators into an index, using Hasse diagrams and partially
ordered sets. It is accordingly called poset prioritization and
ranking system.
We propose a cross-disciplinary collaboration to design and build
the prototype system for surveillance infrastructure of hotspot
detection and prioritization. The methodological toolbox and the
software toolkit developed will support and leverage core missions
of several agencies as well as their interactive counterparts in the
society. The research advances in the allied sciences and technologies
necessary to make such a system work are the thrust of this five year
project.
The project will have a dual disciplinary and cross-disciplinary
thrust. Dialogues and discussions will be particularly welcome,
leading potentially to well considered synergistic case studies. The
collaborative case studies are expected to be conceptual, structural,
methodological, computational, applicational, developmental,
refinemental, validational, and/or visualizational in their individual
thrust.
The following websites have additional information:
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http://www.stat.psu.edu/hotspots/
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http://www.stat.psu.edu/~gpp/
NIST Contact:
Charles Hagwood, x-2846.