A Scalable Data Management Tool to Support Epidemiological Modeling of Large Urban Regions

We describe the design and prototype implementation of a data management tool supporting simulation based models for studying the spread of infectious diseases in large urban regions. The need for such tools arises due to diverse and competing disease models, social networks, and experimental designs that are being investigated. A realistic case study produces large amounts of data. Organizing such datasets is necessary for effectively supporting analysts and policy-makers interested in various cases. We report our ongoing efforts to develop EpiDM--an integrated information management tool for interrelated digital resources, where the central piece is EpiDL(a digital library for efficient access to these datasets). The work is unique in terms of the specific application domain, which we are not aware of any such efforts and tools that can be generalized for simulation-based modeling of other sociotechnical systems. EpiDL follows the 5S framework developed in the DL community.