Mapping Infectious Disease across the Maine-New Brunswick Border

This project addresses the need to understand and plan for infectious disease outbreaks that affect both Canada and the United States. This project will enable public health officials, researchers, policy-makers and the public to utilize mapping technology to view infectious disease information, map public health risks and disease control measures, on a seamless map of New Brunswick and Maine. Existing framework and thematic data sets focusing on infectious disease (e.g. influenza) will be integrated as part of this cross-border initiative enabling immunization strategies.

An initial examination of legal and technical issues has been completed, and partnerships are in place. All data integration and web mapping services developed in this project will be integrated within the CGDI and NSDI and adhere to OGC interoperability standards. New WMS / clearinghouse capabilities will be developed and customized to provide maximum flexibility in viewing data while still respecting data privacy. Through the deployment of web mapping technology, this project will enable cross-border data integration, visualization, analysis, and sharing with multiple partners via a distributed access network. Multi-user collaboration, alerting, and decision-support tools will be developed in addition to web-mapping services. A simulation of an infectious disease outbreak will be conducted in collaboration with partners, to evaluate technologies developed as part of this project. New Brunswick and Maine provide a perfect testing ground for an advanced web-mapping application that will fill the gap that currently exists in surveillance and decision support tools available to local, provincial/state, national officials and the public.

Final Report - Appendix 1 - Appendix 2 - Appendix 3 - Appendix 4

Quarterly Report

Power Point describing this project

Article in the International Journal of Health Geographics (February 25, 2008)

Lung Association of New Brunswick Mapping Site