Govt drawing on big data analytics to contain pandemic
The government has initiated an activity to draw a digital map to track coronavirus cases and find out areas vunerable to contamination through the use of mobile users' information -- a move that may help portray the real picture of a possible outbreak.
Under a self-reporting method, mobile users will get a short message (SMS) from their operators and in reply they'll share a few of their health information.
All the 16.62 crore cellular phone users in the united states will start getting SMS from this morning and they'll be asked to generate a call to *3332# free of charge.
During the 90-second contact the kind of interactive voice response (IVR), users will answer five questions about: how old they are; whether they have difficulty in breathing; if they have fever or cough; if they have come in touch with a person who returned from abroad recently; and if they have come near to any coronavirus-infected people.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission yesterday directed the mobile operators to get started on sending the SMS to all users.
The operators will share the data with a national monitoring centre and the Usage of Information (a2i) project beneath the ICT Division every six hours and both will then develop the map.
Users will also have the option to share the info through http://corona.gov.bd/ plus some designated mobile applications such as for example bKash, GP, Robi, Banglalink and Uber.
"We are now in a testing phase and so are closely dealing with the mobile operators, especially Robi," said Anir Chowdhury, policy advisor of a2i, who's leading the complete process.
Last week Robi demonstrated some ideas about establishing a "mobility tracking system" that will give a concept about the suspected coronavirus-infected areas.
The info collected from the clients will be used for developing the map that can help the federal government take stock of the entire coronavirus situation, Chowdhury said.
"We have various other plans which will be executed through technology but customers' personal data will never be used by any means. Sharing information will never be made mandatory but we will request the users to greatly help the federal government in its battle against the coronavirus," he added.
The a2i is making the ideas under the auspices of the World Health Organisation plus some other international agencies.
Beneath the self-reporting system, callers' information may also be collected through the government's "333 call centre", which receives more than one lakh calls daily.
Some other agencies also handle a large number of calls each day and everything will be utilized for analysis that will assist the government make a roadmap about how to fight the pandemic.
However, officials said the probability of overlapping of data will be zero as a customer's mobile number, location or his/her handset's international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number will be utilized for computing all the data.
"With all these initiatives set up, there's a chance that the map will be 95-98 % authentic," said a senior official of a mobile phone operator.
Telecom Minister Mustafa Jabbar said they have already been working on the problem for the last one week and involving all stakeholders like the a2i, National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre, medical and home ministries and the mobile operators.
"We've the resources and technological advancement. We are able to also use technologies like big data analytics and artificial intelligence to support the outbreak."
South Korea witnessed a huge success using big data and AI, as the other countries are also choosing these technologies to combat coronavirus, the minister said, adding that the Bangladesh government will tread the same path.
A senior official of another mobile operator said they have the ability to give the government a concept of the bigger risk zones and share information of the individuals in the risk zones.
"After creating the map we can also provide real-time data to the government if anyone moves out from the risky zone," the official said asking never to be named as a result of the sensitivity of the problem.
In the last seven days about 1.20 crore mobile users left the administrative centre city for his or her home in villages or other towns, which pose an enormous challenge for the mobile operators as service quality beyond Dhaka is not on a single level.
But the situation continues to be manageable, he said.
