Argus

Project Argus creates and implements a biological event detection and tracking capability that provides early warning alerts on a global scale. Argus currently manages between 2,200 and 3,300 active, socially disruptive biological event case files with update report threading for approximately 175 countries and over 130 disease entities. It posits a sophisticated scaling of outbreak severity based not only on disease metrics but also on sociological and governmental reactions in the face of mild to severe epidemics (Chute, 2008). The system relies on Internet technologies as “harvesting engines” to capture information relevant to the definitional criteria for biological-outbreak severity metrics. Official disease reports from WHO or unofficial international health status reports from ProMED are collected as indicators of possible biological events. The association of media activities and the biological events are shown in Figure 13-1. Figure 13-2 depicts the Argus system's biological event detection and tracking process.