Declan Butler, a nature and science reporter, has compiled an example of the power that is now in the hands of individuals. Using commercially available software and data from an Excel spreadsheet and Google Earth, he has created an interactive map tracing the spread of Avian Flu in birds and humans from September 2003 - April 2006.
Butler details the process on his blog.
As Tim O'Reilly writes in his post How to Prepare for a Pandemic:
It's easy to dismiss ideas like these as unnecessarily alarmist. But I'm a big fan of the idea from scenario planning that the goal is not to get the future "right", but rather to imagine enough challenging eventualities that you build a strategy that is robust in the face of a range of possible futures.
From [email protected]:
To demonstrate the potential of 'mashups', which weave together data from different sources (see 'Mashups mix data into global service' ), Nature has created a simple example - a global visualization of avian flu cases and outbreaks. To our knowledge, this is the only source where all of this information has been brought together. The mashup was first built in December 2005, and will be updated periodically (Download the mashup by clicking here . You will need Google Earth, which you can download here.)
[Thanks to Sam Rose who posted the link on CooperativeCommons]
More links:
>> Preparing for Pandemic Avian Flu - A Family
& Neighborhood Workbook for Emergency Readiness by Joe & Rita Sterling
>> Using Technologies of Cooperation, Knowledge Commons, and Foresight to Avert Pandemic
>> "How to prepare for a pandemic" from O'Reilly Radar
>> Larry Brilliant's Instedd Project
(International Networked System for Total Early Disease Detection),
which focuses on how we can use collective intelligence to spot
infectious disease outbreaks before they spread.
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