City-based computer science professor Dr. Nupur Giri has been awarded Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Earth Grant 2019 for working on predicting how airborne diseases can propagate based on climate conditions, air quality, and population density in an area.
Dr. Giri, professor and head of department of computer engineering at the Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology (VESIT), Chembur, and her team started the project in 2018 to find the correlation between these seemingly disparate factors to predict the propagation of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) in India.
To study the impact of environmental conditions, such as climatic factors and pollution, on the epidemiology of TB, the team collated data from 725 districts over a 17-year time frame from various sources.
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Using this data, Dr. Giri and her team is working on creating an AI-based model which can help predict areas of TB spread and help agencies tackling the disease focus their efforts in those areas. Once successfully done, this model could also be employed for other diseases.
A note by Microsoft said Dr. Giri’s area of work is important, considering air pollution causes nearly 4.2 million deaths every year, as per the World Health Organization. “If we can employ AI algorithms to predict the spread of disease and understand how environmental changes, including climatic conditions and external factors like pollution, impact the ecology and epidemiology of disease, we can initiate precision public health at a granular level,” Dr. Giri said.
With the highest number of cases in the world, TB poses a major public health problem in India. The disease affected an estimated 2.74 million people in India in 2017. India also leads the chart in the occurrence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), driving home the urgency to address the issue.
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“High concentration of respirable and fine suspended particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) not only impacts the cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and respiratory systems, but also increases the spread of airborne diseases,” the note said.
Dr.Giri hopes their AI-based model can help predict areas of spread of TB and help agencies tackling the disease focus their efforts in those areas. With multiple sources of data and varied frequency, the team spent a few months to smoothen, standardise, and normalise the data. Dr.Giri said following the grant, the team’s pace quickened significantly once they started using Microsoft’s Azure platform and the tools provided.