Geo-visual Approach for Spatial Scan Statistics: An Analysis of Dengue Fever Outbreaks in Delhi

There are very few surveillance systems being used to detect disease outbreaks at present. In disease surveillance system, data related to cases and various risk factors are collected and then the collected data is transformed into meaningful information for effective disease control using statistical analysis tools. Disease outbreaks can be detected but for effective disease control, a visualization approach is required. Without appropriate visualization, it is very difficult to interpret the results of analysis. In this work, a method has been developed for geographical representation of the disease surveillance and response system for early detection of disease outbreaks using SaTScan and open source Geographic Information System software. Maps that combine the geographical location of diseases and clusters to enhance the understanding of results of statistical analysis tool are developed using QGIS library which provides many spatial algorithms and native GIS functions. This library is accessed through PyQGIS and PyQt using Python. Keywords—Disease Surveillance; p-value; clusters; statistically significant; outbreaks and visualization