NBIC Biofeeds: A Digital Tool for Open Source Biosurveillance across Federal Agencies

Abstract

ObjectiveThe National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) isdeveloping a scalable, flexible open source data collection, analysis,and dissemination tool to support biosurveillance operations bythe U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its federalinteragency partners.IntroductionThe NBIC integrates, analyzes, and distributes key informationabout health and disease events to help ensure the nation’s responsesare well-informed, save lives, and minimize economic impact. NBICserves as a bridge between Federal, State, Local, Territorial, andTribal entities to conduct biosurveillance across human, animal, plant,and environmental domains. The integration of information enablesearly warning and shared situational awareness of biological eventsto inform critical decisions directing response and recovery efforts.To meet its mission objectives, NBIC utilizes a variety of datasets, including open source information, to provide comprehensivecoverage of biological events occurring across the globe. NBICBiofeeds is a digital tool designed to improve the efficiency ofreviewing and analyzing large volumes of open source reportingby biosurveillance analysts on a daily basis; moreover, the systemprovides a mechanism to disseminate tailored feeds allowing NBIC tobetter meet the specific information needs of individual, interagencypartners. The tool is currently under development by the Departmentof Energy (DOE), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)and it is in a testing and evaluation phase supported by NBICbiosurveillance subject matter experts. Integration with the DefenseThreat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Biosurveillance Ecosystem(BSVE) is also underway. NBIC Biofeeds Version 1 is expected tobe fully operational in Fiscal Year 2017.MethodsThe PNNL is applying agile methodology to streamline the buildof NBIC Biofeeds to specifications required for operational use byNBIC and its federal interagency partners. Biosurveillance, analytics,and system engineering subject matter experts provide guidance onthe implementation of features in the tool to ensure functionalityaligns with operational workflows and production support. PNNL isleveraging software from a previous government effort to repurposethe technology to meet NBIC needs. NBIC Biofeeds incorporatesthe open source, document-orientated MongoDB database to captureuser- and system-generated metadata on hundreds of thousandsof records, in part, to establish baselines to aid prospective andretrospective analysis on emerging biological events. NBIC Biofeedsintegrates a biosurveillance taxonomy (uniquely developed by NBIC),which includes input from interagency partners to recognize criticalcharacteristics of a biological event. In NBIC Biofeeds Version1, metadata capture of reported events is done manually by NBICanalysts; however, moving forward in Version 2, the tool will befurther automated to flag significant reporting on biological eventswith a human remaining in the loop to confirm the validity of thesystem-generated tags.ResultsTo serve as a one-stop tool for open source biosurveillance,NBIC Biofeeds automatically harvests information from thousandsof websites, utilizing third party aggregators, paid subscriptions todata feeds, and scraping of high priority sources. Users can developdesired queries for automatic updating, leverage a unique reviewand curation mechanism, and further analyze data from topical,geographic, and temporal visualization features in the tool. To meetNBIC’s information sharing needs, the tool allows for design oftailored RSS feeds and electronic message-based delivery of analysison biological events, intended for recipients in the government withunique missions around human, animal, plant, and environmentalhealth.ConclusionsThrough current testing and evaluation – underway bybiosurveillance subject matter experts – NBIC Biofeeds isdemonstrating value in supporting open source biosurveillanceby the Center for more rapid recognition and sharing of key eventcharacteristics. Centralizing access and analysis of this datasetinto a single system is increasing the efficiency of daily, globalbiosurveillance, while enhancing the value of information identifiedthrough use of the querying, curation, and production support featuresin the tool.