Civic technologists take aim at Ebola with data | Capital New York

"Over one hundred civic technologists gathered in the Flatiron District on Saturday for an Ebola Open Data Jam, to help counter the outbreak using data collection and analysis, a project that drew participants with backgrounds in city and state government.  'Aid workers everywhere need some of this basic information. I think you can see what happened in Dallas as an example,' said Jeanne Holm, evangelist for Data.gov, the federal open data platform, and chief knowledge architect at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the organizers of the event, along with IBM Research, the Africa Open Data Meetup group, State Department officials and others.  Much of the event focused on aiding work on the ground in West Africa, but organizers and participants said the longterm goals would also benefit readiness in New York and the rest of the country ... Participants explored how technology could aid so-called 'contact tracing,' tracking the steps of infected individuals through cell phone data or visualizations. New insights on how the disease spreads can 'suddenly make a different kind of quarantine necessary,' Holm said ..."