Monday, October 13, 2014
US State Department's Humanitarian Information Unit
I was very pleased to learn today that Dr. Debbie Fugate (one of my former PhD students) is now Chief of the US State Department's Humanitarian Information Unit and Senior Advisor to The Geographer (who is Dr. Lee Schwartz). She is right in the middle of very important and useful geospatial and spatial demographic analyses, trying to help everyone in this country get a handle on events around the globe. Check out this set of maps summarizing the conflict coming out of Syria (and, see map below). They are also supporting analyses of the outbreak of Ebola. And here's a very cool online mapping tool: MapGive. Check it all out.
glad you brought up the Ebola outbreak. I want to share some projections with you, and hope you will do a future article. Please see the following link (next comment), which gives one set of scientific analysis for what is happening in West Africa. If you scroll down their page, and Click on "Current Projections" ... it will enlarge the charts. So you can see projected number of infected people. In a worst-case situation, which may not apply here, there could be as many as 75,000 people infected by the end of October (in West Africa). The main thing to note from the analysis ... is that the Ebola outbreak is not "over". It is still warming up ... the number of infections is spreading rapidly by late October. Of course, this assumes the highest rate of transmission, and the failure of all possible safeguards (e.g. quarantine of certain areas). So hopefully things do not fall apart by that much. Still ... I would like to get your thoughts about when the number of casualties becomes a significant factor on the demographics of the region (as opposed to a minor disturbance in the death rate for the area). thanks, Pete, Redondo Beach
ReplyDelete