Category: Data-Driven Crisis Management

Our team at CrisisReady has built interactive decision-making tools to help first responders and aid agencies make decisions on mobilization and resource allocation based on near real-time population displacement data. We have built instances for the Dixie wildfire in California, and hurricanes Ida, Fiona and Ian.

CrisisReady is an international research-response platform based at Harvard University and Direct Relief. Co-led by Caroline Buckee, Satchit Balsari, and Andrew Schroeder, the platform’s Data-Methods-Translational Framework allows the CrisisReady team to scale data-driven decision making through a network of regional partners.

Our team at the India Digital Health Net is studying the Indian ministry of health’s non-communicable disease screening and management digital tool, targeting 100 million households, to optimize design choices to improve physician and patient uptake and satisfaction.

The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network (CMDN) is a network of infectious disease epidemiologists at universities around the world working with technology companies to use aggregated mobility data to support the COVID-19 response. The goal of the CMDN is to provide daily updates to decision makers at the state and local levels on how well social distancing interventions are working, using anonymized, aggregated data sets from mobile devices, along with analytic support for interpretation.

The Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest mass gathering, where tens of millions congregate at one of four holy sites in India during a several week-long festival. The government builds an ephemeral city — replete with roads, sanitation, and power — in which religious groups and small business provide food, shelter, sermons, and entertainment for the visiting pilgrims. In 2013, Harvard University sent a multi-disciplinary research team of faculty and students with backgrounds in theology, urban planning, public health, and business to study the world’s largest mass gathering.

Despite the long standing excitement about the potential for digital tools, Big Data and AI to transform our lives, these innovations–with some exceptions–have so far had little impact on the greatest public health emergency of our time, explains Satchit Balsari, Caroline Buckee, and Andrew Schroeder in Plos Digital Health.