Biosurveillance primarily focuses on developing effective surveillance, prevention and operational capabilities for detecting and countering biological threats. S&T takes a system-level approach to integrating information into surveillance architectures, developing and testing advanced detection systems, and implementing a cross-domain focus on biological, chemical and agricultural threats.
The Enhanced Passive Surveillance program is working to further develop, demonstrate and deliver a proof-of-concept surveillance system for identifying endemic, trans-boundary and emerging disease outbreaks in livestock. This expanded system will integrate multiple surveillance data streams from varied sources in real-time, helping to determine baseline prevalence rates for observed animal health issues, track variations in animal health status and identify trigger points to alert officials for action.
The BioThreat Awareness APEX program will develop affordable, effective and rapid detection systems and architectures to provide advance warning of a biological attack at indoor, outdoor and national security events. The project will also engage local jurisdictions in the testing of integrated information sharing systems that ensure relevant data is quickly available to key decision makers during an event.
The Biosurveillance Information and Knowledge Integration Program seeks to develop a Community of Practice (COP) Platform prototype that integrates multiple data streams to support decision making during a biological event as well as inform training tools for state responders. This effort uses New York City as a focus, while working toward national implementation. By examining workflow processes and developing a COP platform to include their highest priority information streams, we will not only enable a near term prototype capability for a highly motivated set of stakeholders, but serve as a potential template for other metropolitan areas. By examining NYC biosurveillance, we will gain an understanding of how to provide a biodefense solution given finite resources as well as extreme levels of competing information and priorities.