Automated Detection of Infectious Disease Outbreaks Diploma

ii Hiermit erkläre ich, dass ich die Diplomarbeit selbstständig angefertigt und nur die angegebenen Quellen verwendet habe. iv Acknowledgement Today, the day has come, I will complete my Diploma thesis. I am deeply grateful for the support of many people who helped me during these last months while I worked on this project. A special thank you to.... ... Michael Höhle for his excellent supervision, his accurate proofreading, his support , his commitment and his patience. I also want to thank him for his R package developement surveillance which is a great framework to automated outbreak detection methods. Wink for proofreading and their fair comments. ... Gunna Höwing who helped me to cope with the thesis and printed it ... my friends, especially Marcus Scherl, and my family for their constant support, encouragement, and bearing my daily statement 'Today, I will complete my Diploma thesis!'.