GEOSPATIAL FRAMEWORK FOR DENGUE USING OPEN SOURCE WEB GIS TECHNOLOGY Anuj Tiwari , Dr. Kamal Jain
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India
[email protected] KEY WORDS: GIS, Web GIS, Open Source, Geospatial, Dengue, DHF, geocode. ABSTRACT: Surveillance of fatal disease increasingly realise on geographic information (Spatial and Temporal factors). We develop a web based geographical information system for online dengue and DHF mapping that is distributed, loosely coupled, interoperable and ultimately provide a real time, dynamic way to represent disease information on map. Hospital have access to password protected data entry functions which allow them to submit and update current and historical data for dengue patients, GIS system in turn geocode, model, map, analyze, manage and present this spatio-temporal information. Our data on reported cases, deaths and circulating viruses are available to the public for query by year, month and geographic area. Results of queries are available in the form of table, map, chart and text formats. The objective of developed web application is to provide a standard platform for sharing current surveillance data and making the national data more comparable than they are today, in order to detect and monitor incidence and trends of dengue and DHF. It also provide unrestricted access to useful information that can help public health professionals with advance warning of epidemics for collaborative preparedness, case management, response and recovery stages of disease control. The aim of this paper is to define the role of geographical information system (GIS) in current dengue surveillance systems and focus on the application of open access web GIS technology to emphasis its importance in developing INDIA, where the dengue burden is increasing year by year. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Dengue Epidemiology Dengue (Breakbone Fever or Dandy Fever) is a mosquito-borne infection that widespread in 40% of the world's population and become a major international public health concern. In the last 50 years, Dengue has emerged as a serious public health problem and according to an estimation 50 million dengue infections occur annually and approximately 2.5 billion people live in dengue endemic countries (WHO, 2008). Dengue inflicts a significant health, economic and social burden on the populations of these endemic countries. Dengue is spread by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes, which are widely distributed in subtropical and tropical areas of the world. Virus has four different serotypes DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4. The emergence and spread of all four dengue viruses (“serotypes”) from Asia to the Americas, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean regions represent a global pandemic threat. All four serotypes can cause the full spectrum of disease from a subclinical infection to a mild self limiting disease, the dengue fever (DF) and a severe disease that may be fatal, the dengue haemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS). A small percentage of persons who have previously been infected by one dengue serotype develop bleeding and endothelial leak upon infection with another dengue serotype. This syndrome is termed dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). 1.2 Dengue in INDIA: The first major epidemic of the DHF occurred in 1953-1954 in Philippines followed by a quick global spread of epidemics of DF/DHF (Rigau-Perez et al., 1998). DHF was occurring in the adjoining countries but it was absent in India for unknown
reasons as all the risk factors were present. The DHF started simmering in various parts of India since 1988 (Kabra et al., 1992, Bhattacharjee et al., 1993, Cherian et al., 1994). The first major wide spread epidemics of DHF/DSS occurred in India in 1996 involving areas around Delhi (Dar et al., 1999) and Lucknow (Agarwal et al., 1999) and then it spread to all over the country (Shah et al., 2004). Recurring outbreaks of DF/DHF have been reported from various States/UTs namely Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Goa, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Pondicherry, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Chandigarh. According to Indian Ministry of Health, since 2001, number of persons affected and casualties are growing in INDIA. Following charts show the growth pattern up to October 2013: 2. WEB GIS TECHNOLOGY A unified visual representation that combine spatial, temporal and attribute information for each and every object of interest and lets us question, analyze, interpret, understand, and simulate data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, reports, and charts is known as GIS. World Wide Web has revealed the immense value and unique ability of GIS to analyze large integrated spatial and non-spatial data with its sophisticated analysis functions and introduced flexible architectures to make distributed geographic information (DGI) available to a very large worldwide audience with modern IT infrastructure. Web GIS provides a fresh perspective on information and brings to life the often hidden meaning of static data to reveal new opportunities and innovative approaches with an intuitive user interface.
Figure 1. Reported Cases of Dengue from 2001 onwards (Source: Indian Ministry of Health).
Figure 2. Reported Death from Dengue from 2001 onwards (Source: Indian Ministry of Health).
Figure 3. Three-tier web GIS architecture. The role of spatial information and related GIS technologies in disaster management has been well-known worldwide. Surveillance of fatal disease increasingly realize on geographic information (Spatial and Temporal factors). Web GIS provide a suitable platform for visualization and spatial analysis of epidemiology data. This paper aims to address a web based geographical information system for online dengue and DHF mapping and ultimately provide a real time, dynamic open source framework to represent disease management. 3. WEB GIS ARCHITECTURE Web GIS system normally consists of “three-tier architecture” which allows a flexible separation of the domain logic (Application Tier) from the data source (Database Tier) and the data presentation logics (Presentation Tier). The system architecture of the Web-enabled-GIS is depicted in the Figure3. The architecture is composed of three layers: the user interface layer, the application logic layer and the database layer (Chen et al., ), (Li et al., 2002) having following specific functions. 3.1 User Interface Tier User-interface (client) tier is the layer of user interaction. Its focus is on efficient user interface design and accessibility. As system is prototyped on the Internet so users are allowed to access the system by using any existing web browser. The user
interface tier contains a password protected login panel for hospitals which allows them to submit and update current and historical data for dengue patients. Results of user queries are available in the form of table, map, chart and text boxes. In our system, the major web-server site language used is HTML, AJAX and Java Script. 3.2 Application Logic Tier Application Logic Tier can be subcategories into two server components i.e. Web Server and Web Map Server. Web server interacts with the client through a web browser. It delivers web pages to the client and to an application by using the web browser and HTTP protocols respectively. We used world’s most popular open source Web server Apache 2.2.x in our project to provide access to Web pages via Internet or other network. Web Map Server provides set of tools for building spatiallyenabled web mapping applications and web services. It makes it possible to access and display spatially enabled content of the geodatabase and enable querying and analysis of the displayed data (The AirAware Project). To publish the project’s geodata sources on the web we used GeoServer as web map server. GEOSERVER provides an interoperable infrastructure that is useful to share spatial information according to Open GIS Consortium Standards.
Figure 4. Three-tier web GIS architecture.
3.3 Database Tier Database tier contains the database management system that manages all persistent data. Here metadata information is stored and retrieved. It’s also responsible for managing updates, allowing simultaneous (concurrent) access from web servers, providing security, ensuring the integrity of data, and importantly, allows quick and flexible access to metadata. We used open source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) PostgreSQL with PostGIS that provide a spatial extension for PostgreSQL. 4. OPEN SOURSE WEB GIS INFRASTRUCTURE There is a variety of technologies used for developing WEB GIS. The open source GIS has grown its popularity in geoinformatics community. The open source technology guarantees the freedom to read, redistribute, modify and use software with better quality, more flexibility, and lower cost. Open source technology provides an open and distributed architecture for disseminating geospatial data and web processing tools on the internet without time and cost restrictions. Web-based Dengue information system built on a completely Open Source infrastructure. Open Source technology offers a high degree of customized package necessary to build-up an advanced WEB solution (such as web mapping services, advanced spatial analysis and spatial databases) for a Spatial Information that can be used interactively. The system uses a technological design pattern based on the Windows Operating System, the Apache Web Server, Post GIS spatial database extender and PostgreSQL Database Management System. 4.1 Client Side Components 4.1.1 Open Layer: OpenLayers is an open-source client-side pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps, Bing Maps. 4.1.2 ExtJS: ExtJS is a client-side JavaScript framework for building client Applications. ExtJS is a best collection of UI elements. It includes a set of GUI-based form controls for use
within web applications. These come with a ‘pixel-prefected’ style and are useable out of the box. 4.1.3 GeoExt: GeoExt is extensions to ExtJS that bind basic ExtJS components to the spatial features of OpenLayers that provides a ground-work for creating web-mapping applications. It is a set of components that allow ExtJS and OpenLayers to work together as a single spatial framework. 4.2 Server Side Components 4.2.1 Apache: The world's most popular Web server (HTTP server). The Apache Web server provides a full range of Web server features, including CGI, SSL, and virtual domains. Apache provides a variety of Multi Processing Modules (MPMs) which allow Apache to run in a process-based, hybrid (process and thread) or event-hybrid mode, to better match the demands of each particular infrastructure. 4.2.2 Geo-Server: GeoServer is open source server-side software written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. It publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. It is built on GeoTools, an open source Java GIS Toolkit. 4.2.3 PostGIS: PostGIS is an open source, freely available, and fairly OGC compliant spatial database extender for the PostgreSQL Database Management System. It is a spatial language extension module to the PostgreSQL backend server. 4.2.4 PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL is a general purpose and object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It allows us to add custom functions developed using different programming languages. PostgreSQL is the obvious cahoice for new development projects because it offers superior data protection. 5. DEVELOPED SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND METHODOLOGY We developed an open-source web based geographical information system for online dengue and DHF mapping that delivers datasets and analytical capabilities to end user with a browser and an internet connection. Developed Web GIS dengue Disease Framework demonstrates a rich web mapping application. This web mapping site designed and built to enable
data entry, dynamic storage and online mapping for dengue patients. Systems provide a password protected Admin (login) interface as shown in figure5 to the hospital which in turn used by concerned authority to fill entries for dengue patient. A ‘Patient Query form’ (as depicted in the figure6) is to be filled for each dengue patient of the hospital, this form is very much similar to the form used by hospitals across the country to keep track of patient condition and fill up every day. Data filled through admin panel is stored in postgresql database which updates as per the input entries. This is basically a public facing web mapping site, a complex web GIS application that was built for Dengue Disease surveillance and monitoring. End users are presented with a menu driven interface that facilitate the selection of an area of interest and predicated loss or protection status over dedicated GIS layers. Accoring to the user quaries a browser send a request to Web server (Apache). Apache transfer browser request parameters (like ‘mapfilepath’) and CGI procedures to the Geo Server. Geo Server is based on information that is defined by the mapfile, generate a specified query to the PostGIS. PostGIS start with Geometry validation and behave like an initial filter for the user's request. It sent data retrieval requests to the PostgreSQL database, whose result is transmitted back to the Geo Server for post-processing. Geo Server receive relevant information and made a text attribute information transfer diagram work. Spatial information turn into a png image, and finally the image is added to the text to the image geometry. The result of user query is now available in various forms like Table, Bar and Pie chart (Table1,Figure8 and Figure9).
Figure 6. Patient Query Form.
Technically the application is based on the open source tools MapServer, PostGIS, and OpenLayers and in addition the JavaScript frameworks ExtJS & GeoExt.
Figure 7. Delhi Zone wise Dengue Patients mapping.
Table 1. Delhi City Dengue Cases and Death 2007 onwards (Source: Indian Ministry of Health).
Figure 5. Hospital Login Panel.
Year
Cases
Death
2007
548
1
2008
1312
2
2009
1153
3
2010
6259
8
2011
1131
8
2012
2093
4
2013
4402
6
REFERENCES [1]. WHO. Dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever. Factsheet No 117, revised May 2008. Geneva, World Health Organization,2008. (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs117/en/). [2]. Rigau-Perez JG, Clark GG, Gubler DJ, 8. Reiter P, Sanders EJ, Vorndam AV. Dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever. Lancet 1998; 352 : 971-7. [3]. Kabra S. K., Verma IC, Arora NK, Jain Y, Kalra V. Dengue haemorrhagic fever in children in Delhi. Bull World Health Organ 1992; 70 : 105-8. Figure8. Delhi City Dengue Cases 2007 onward (Source: Indian Ministry of Health).
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Figure9. Delhi City Dengue Death 2007 onwards. (Source: Indian Ministry of Health).
6. CONCLUSION The developed system successfully enables government, NGOS and public health professionals to spatially visualize, detect and monitor incidence and trends of dengue and DHF in real time within a web browser, without the need for any additional software, or software training. System provides a standard platform for sharing current surveillance data in order to detect and monitor incidence and trends of dengue and DHF. This Web based Geographic information systems (GIS) have useful tools for management and surveillance of dengue/DHF and this way it helps Municipal Corporation to identify the insecticide spraying area that maximizes coverage of epidemic risk spots on the daily basis and minimizes the length of the boundaries of sprayed areas. Again data can evaluate for advance warning of epidemics to improve preparedness, case management, and reduce fatality rates. The system internally developed with open source software is very suitable for spatial data sharing, especially in developing countries where cost is always a key factor. Integrating open source standards Web service based applications to build spatial information systems is a promising alternative to solutions based on commercial products and provide unrestricted access to useful information that can help public health professionals with advance warning of epidemics for collaborative preparedness, case management, response and recovery stages of disease control.
[8]. Shah I, Deshpande GC, Tardeja PN14. . Outbreak of dengue in Mumbai and predictive markers for dengue shock syndrome. J Trop Pediatr 2004; 50 : 301-5. [9]. Shu-Ching Chen, Sneh Gulati, Shahid Hamid, Xin Huang, Lin Luo, Nirva Morisseau- Leroy,Mark D. Powell, Chengjun Zhan and Chengcui Zhang, A Three-Tier System Architecture Design and Development for Hurricane Occurrence Simulation. [10]. Li, L., Li, J. & Tian Y., 2002. A Study on Web GIS Architecture Based on JNLP. Proceedings, ISPRS Comm, IV Symposium, Canada. [11]. The AirAware Project. [http://life-airaware.inmh.ro/index.php? cat=ops&subcat=onlinegis].
