Characterizing dengue spread and severity using internet media sources

Pakistan witnessed one of its deadliest dengue outbreaks in 2011 resulting in hundreds of deaths throughout the country. Prior to the outbreak, dengue awareness was relatively low and hospitals in the country were not completely prepared to handle the epidemic with limited knowledge about the spread of the disease in each locality. This poster aims to build a system that automatically characterizes the spread and severity of the dengue disease at a fine-grained location granularity based on analyzing news reports from Internet media sources. Based on a detailed analysis of news reports gathered from several leading dailies in Pakistan, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our system to accurately characterize the dengue spread and severity across different locations within Pakistan.