PIPP Phase I: An End-to-End Pandemic Early Warning System by Harnessing Open-source Intelligence

持续的全球COVID-19疫情凸显了为大流行做好准备的必要性。早期发现和尽可能的预测是关键。尽管在地球下一次大流行之前获得尽可能多的早期预警至关重要，但下一次全球疫情爆发的可能性绝大，这是当前COVID-19危机的重演。开放源情报（OSINT）对提供流行病预警至关重要。疾病，特别是传染病，是一种社会生物现象，会留下社会和微生物足迹。这个大流行预防预测情报（PIPP）第一阶段：发展赠款项目将探索开发一个开源情报系统的可行性，该系统由来自不同来源的生物，环境，社会经济，行为和媒体数据提供信息，以监测人类社会的异常活动迹象，反映具有大流行潜力的新型病原体的出现。PIPP第一阶段项目将开发一个由人工智能（AI）、机器学习、数据科学和开源技术驱动的端到端流行病预警系统的原型，并将在2015年10月启动，以帮助人们更好地应对新冠肺炎疫情。它可以同时寻找新出现的传染病或已知疾病的迹象，预测其传播，并检测和监测空间和时间上的风险因素。该系统将把人类智能作为一个集成组件，并将是可转移和可扩展的，以支持额外的数据源和机器学习模型，使其适合检测和预测新疾病的爆发，无论其性质和规模如何。第一阶段的活动包括四个协同试点项目，突出了应对重大挑战的创新方法，以及发展社区和全面中心能力的详细计划。该奖项得到了跨部门的大流行预防预测情报第一阶段（PIPP）计划的支持，该计划由生物科学局（BIO），计算机信息科学与工程（CISE），社会，行为和经济科学（SBE）和工程（ENG）。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The ongoing global COVID-19 outbreak highlights the need to prepare for pandemics. Early detection, and, to the extent possible, prediction, are the key. While it is crucial to get as much early warning as possible in advance of the planet’s next pandemic, the odds are overwhelmingly against the next global outbreak being an exact repeat of the current COVID-19 crisis. Open source intelligence (OSINT) is vital to the provision of pandemic early warning. Diseases, especially infectious diseases, are socio-biological phenomena and leave both social and microbiological footprints. This Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) Phase I: Development Grants project will explore the feasibility of developing an open-source intelligence system, informed by biological, environmental, socio-economical, behavioral, and media data from diverse sources, to monitor human society for signs of unusual activities that reflect the emergence of novel pathogens with pandemic potential. This multidisciplinary research will bridge biology, social sciences, epidemiology, and computer science to address this grand challenge and start construction of a semi-autonomous system to give an early warning of the next pandemic.The PIPP Phase I project will develop a prototype of an end-to-end pandemic-early-warning system powered by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data science, and open-source technologies, which can simultaneously look for signs of an emerging infectious disease or a known disease, predict its spread, and detect and monitor risk factors over space and time. The system will embrace human intelligence as an integrated component and will be transferable and extensible to support additional data sources and machine learning models, making it suitable for detecting and predicting outbreaks of a new disease regardless of its nature and scale. The Phase I activities include four synergistic pilot projects highlighting innovative approaches to addressing the grand challenges, as well as a detailed plan to develop communities and capacity of a full center.This award is supported by the cross-directorate Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I (PIPP) program, which is jointly funded by the Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO), Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) and Engineering (ENG).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.