With funding support from the federal GeoConnections program, Infonaut is working with Peel Public Health to build an emergency preparedness modeling tool using Geographic Information Systems.

This Infectious Disease Simulation Tool will let public health officials, emergency response professionals and other decision-makers visualize the dynamics of infectious disease outbreaks over time and space within their community – giving them the ability to better plan for and respond to urgent health-related matters.

Virtual pandemic simulation technology will represent a dramatic step forward in Ontario’s emergency response planning capabilities. The Infectious Disease Simulation Tool will show the implications of an outbreak and display results in an impactful and instantly informative geographic model.

Peel anticipates the system will have many benefits, enabling planners & decision makers to:

* Visualize the dynamics of a pandemic, outbreak, or other emergency
* Simulate readiness and response
* Evaluate response times
* Quantify the costs
* Contrast effective and non-effective intervention strategies

The Infectious Disease Simulation Tool reduces the time required to prepare for and respond to emergencies, and ultimately, saves lives and property through better planning.

The project is a collaboration between Peel Public Health and Infonaut, with additional participation from Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington (KFL&A) Health Unit; Queen’s University Public Health Informatics; SAS, who are providing the project’s analytical framework; and the University of Waterloo, where a spatial temporal modeling expert is advising Infonaut on how to best leverage current modeling techniques.

This spring, Infonaut completed the first phase of this project: clarifying the functionality and benefits with a large group of experts in the community. These stakeholders included epidemiologists, communicable disease surveillance and control managers, planners and frontline responders.

We’re taking current and best practices in communicable disease surveillance, data custodianship, and intervention strategies and translating them into solutions.

For more information on the Infectious Disease Simulation Tool and Infonaut’s other products and services, please contact us at info@infonaut.ca.