EPIWork

From XLDB

The EPIWORK project, funded by the EU under a FET Proactive Initiative in FP7, proposes a multidisciplinary research effort aimed at developing the approriate framework of tools and knowledge needed for the design of epidemic forecast infrastructures. The XLDB Team is leading the development of the Epidemic Marketplace in EPIWORK.

In recent years a huge flow of quantitative social, demographic and behavioural data is becoming available spurring the quest for innovative technologies that can improve the traditional disease-surveillance systems, providing faster and better localized detection capabilities and resulting in a broad practical impact.

The research considers most of the much needed development of modeling, computational and ICT tools, such as

1. the foundation and development of the mathematical and computational methods needed to achieve prediction and predictability of disease spreading in complex social systems;
2. the development of large scale, data driven computational models endowed with a high level of realism and aimed at epidemic scenario forecast;
3. the design and implemention of original data-collection schemes motivated by identified modelling needs, such as the collection of real-time disease incidence, through innovative web and ICT applications.
4. the set up of a computational platform for epidemic research and data sharing that will generate important synergies between research communities and countries.

Consortium

• Fondazione Istituto per l‘Interscambio Scientifico, ISI, Italy (coordinator)
• Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, FGC-IGC, Portugal
• Tel Aviv University, TAU, Israel
• Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften E.V., MPG, Germany
• Acquisto Inter BV, AIBV, The Netherlands
• London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine, LSHTM, United Kingdom
• SMITTSKYDDS Institutet, SMI, Sweden
• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, KULeuven, Belgium
• Bar Ilan University, BIU, Israel
• Fondazione Bruno Kessler, FBK, Italy
• Center for REsearch And CREATE-NET, Italy
• Telecommunication Experimentation for NETworked communities
• Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon, FFCUL,Portugal

Funding

Seventh Framework Programme Theme (Information and Communication Technologies)

Grant agreement no 231807 for Large-scale Integrating Project

Duration: 48 months from 01 February 2009

Epidemic Marketplace

The XLDB Team is leading the development of the Epidemic Marketplace in EPIWORK.

The overall objective of an epidemic forecast infrastructure is ultimately the support of modeling approaches addressing the required complexity/realism requirements for explaining and predicting the spatio-temporal dynamics of infectious disease propagation at the global scale (with a focus on Europe). Here we develop an information platform to mediate access to distributed collections of public health data, offering an easy and safe way to share data for those data providers who want to collaborate with epidemiological modelers.

Researchers will use this platform in multiple ways:

1. as catalogue of data sources containing the metadata describing existing databases;
2. as a forum to publish information about their own data, seeking modellers to collaborate with, and/or to seek sources of data that could be of interest to their epidemiological modelling efforts;
3. as the host of mediating software that can automatically process queries for epidemiological data available from the information sources connected to the platform.

Once these epidemiological data are properly characterised, work will proceed towards developing a common meta-model for querying data of interest for epidemiological modelling architecture using state-of-the-art semantic-web/grid technologies. Moreover, the analysis of the collected datasets and their annotations and usage will provide a rich environment for deriving an epidemiology ontology, which will help further on the integration and communication among the community of epidemiologists.

XLDB Research Team

The XLDB Team is leading the development of the Epidemic Marketplace in EPIWORK.

• Mário J. Silva
• Dulce Domingos (from GLOSS)
• Ana Paula Afonso
• Francisco Couto
• João Zamite
• João Ferreira
• Paulo Graça
• Carlos Santos
• Tiago Posse

Past Members:

• Juliana Duque
• Fabrício Silva
• Hugo Ferreira
• Luís Filipe Lopes
• Patricia Sousa

Presentations

• Francisco M. Couto, Exploring the semantics of biomedical ontologies, Bioinformatics Open Days, Braga, March 2012 [1]
• Francisco M. Couto, Untangling Biomedical Ontologies, Practical workshop: Bioinformatics and Systems Modelling, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, 2011
• Francisco M. Couto, Exploring the semantics of biomedical ontologies, in External Seminar at European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK, 2011
• Mário J. Silva, Privacy in Socially Intelligent ICT. Imperial College, London, UK. ASSYST Perada Workshop - Towards a Science of Socially Intelligent ICT. August, 2010.

XLDB Publications