IBM Brings Open Data Tech To Ebola Fight - InformationWeek

"The spread of the Ebola virus has been devastating for West Africa. Now, locals in Sierra Leone are working together to contain the outbreak by reporting their concerns directly to the government, thanks to a citizen engagement and analytics system developed by IBM's new research lab in Africa. IBM volunteers also have a community effort underway to identify, inventory, and classify all open data sources related to Ebola. Launched in collaboration with Sierra Leone's Open Government Initiative, the mobile system allows citizens to report Ebola-related matters via SMS or voice calls using a toll-free number set up by telecommunications company Airtel. By using IBM's cloud-based supercomputing and analytics capabilities, the system identifies correlations and highlights emerging issues across the entire data set of messages. The SMS and voice data are location specific, which means IBM can create 'opinion-based heatmaps that correlate public sentiment to location information,' according to the company. The goal is to provide the government with insight into the day-to-day experiences of communities affected by Ebola and come up with a better strategy for containing the disease ... Meanwhile, IBM is also leading an initiative to create a cloud-based Ebola Open Data Repository, which aims to provide governments, aid organizations, and researchers with access to open data related to Ebola. On October 18, IBM volunteers organized an Ebola open data brainstorming session in New York, where technologists, health experts, and aid organizations met to come up with solutions for tackling the epidemic ..."