Why this Initiative ?
Kerala is home to over 35 million people, and being a tropical population extensively connected with the global populations through over 1.6 million expatriates, trade and travel and being a global tourist destination, is in a unique position predisposed to local and global epidemics. It is therefore imperative that preparedness to local and global epidemics form the central theme. This initiative is aimed to fill in the gap in this specific area relying on open science and citizen contributions to be able to prepare, understand and respond to epidemics. This initiative also endeavours to build the much required skill base, resources, data and technologies to be able to help and cater to similar requirements nationally and globally.
Being an Open Science initiative, the programme emphasises on open source tools, resources and data to create a sustainable approach for epidemic preparedness. Going forward, it is envisaged that the open data and applications would find extensibility, use and application in other regions and also contribute to better understanding and contaminant of outbreaks nationally and internationally. To ensure sustainability of such an initiative, a broader collaborative partnership between academic as well as research institutes and groups are envisaged with dedicated support from organisations with commitment to forward the cause on a long term.
The initiative also endeavours to develop the best in class methods and algorithms and the extensive use of artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning approaches and involvement of academic, research institutions as well as an enormous volunteer base of IT professionals and data analysts in the state of Kerala in problems relevant to the state as well as create an ecosystem for skill upgradation in a collaborative environment. Active engagements and collaborations with key institutions in the state as well as within India are envisaged.
Objectives
The initiative aims to provide a platform for confluence and convergence of minds, data and algorithms to solve a significant and relevant issue of epidemic response. This initiative aims to create open resources and tools to be able to track, predict and respond to epidemics and pioneer citizen involvement and open science in Kerala.
The broad objectives of the initiative would include:
1. Pilot citizen science for tracing and tracking epidemics
2. Develop knowledge-bases and resources for understanding epidemics and responding to them including AI/ML and Data Science approaches
3. Develop an ecosystem and platform for interdisciplinary collaboration to address relevant problems.
Data Access and Licensing
All data generated as part of this initiative would follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
This initiative is led by the Vinod Scaria Lab