End Times Surveillance Technology: How the US Homeland Security’s Biosurveillance Arm Uses Tech To Track a Pandemic
By Brandi Vincent, Staff Correspondent APRIL 13, 2020 04:59 PM ET Nextgov.com
The National Biosurveillance Integration Center began tracking what would become the novel coronavirus on Jan. 2.
The Homeland Security Department’s National Biosurveillance Integration Center, or NBIC, is tapping into emerging and advanced technologies to help the government monitor and respond to the novel coronavirus.
Tasked with analyzing, integrating and dispensing critical data and information about health and disease events that pose threats to America, NBIC “began tracking an outbreak of unidentified viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China on January 2, providing early situational awareness on what we now know is COVID-19,” Kenneth Cuccinelli II, who is currently serving as DHS deputy secretary, told Congress in early March.
NBIC Director Aaron Firoved recently shared details with Nextgov via email regarding how technological tools are boosting the trace and fight of the coronavirus and how regular biosurveillance operations have shifted in the midst of a public health crisis.
“NBIC uses its open source tool—Biofeeds—to stay on top of the outbreak,” Firoved explained.
As a custom-designed data collection and analysis system, Biofeeds leverages machine learning techniques, natural language processing, and automated tagging to boost officials’ ability to quickly and effectively identify information that’s most relevant to reported biological events. The resource supports daily biosurveillance operations, Firoved noted, mining through data from more than 800,000 unique sources published from around the world, in more than 90 languages.
“This tool enables NBIC analysts to readily search for information on new and ongoing global biological events and, as they continue to use Biofeeds, that information is fed back into the system’s machine learning processes to improve the automatic detection of biothreats,” Firoved said.
Insiders also turn to other technologies for early, sensitive information sharing. For instance, the center uses a secure interagency message board—known as Wildfire—that’s used by the Biosurveillance Indications and Warnings Analytic Community, which Firoved said is a federal interagency group “focused on the timely collaborative exchange of critical information.”
In the congressional testimony, Cuccinelli also noted that since the coronavirus’ early days, NBIC has supported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Customs and Border Protection by analyzing relevant passenger travel and flight data, which in turn initially helped determine which airports were selected for advanced health screenings for COVID-19.
Regarding the center’s efforts, Firoved said “NBIC also developed code to facilitate faster analysis and visualization of flight data to help understand where travelers from hotspots were arriving in the U.S.”
He explained that NBIC worked collaboratively with CBP and CDC to “retrieve aggregated, de-identified data on travelers moving through outbreak areas.” The center then assessed this flight network to spot airport hubs for passengers that are coming to or from a given country.
“Once those high-traffic, highly connected airports are identified, DHS, including CBP and the Transportation Security Administration, works closely with the CDC to route all admissible persons who have been in areas designated in presidential proclamations—mainland China, Iran, the European Schengen Area, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland—during a specified timeframe, to one of the airports where the federal government has focused public health resources,” Firoved explained.
On top of that, NBIC also uses commercial flight data to trace flight networks outside of the United States and subsequently determine the flow of passengers between countries that may border the nation.
“Early in the outbreak, this allowed us to analyze passenger flow from China to the Americas to consider the risk of spread in the western hemisphere. Having solid data science workflows has allowed us to quickly retool analyses for different parameters, datasets, and questions,” Firoved explained. “NBIC has automated report generation, saving person-hours and allowing analysts to spend their energy on more challenging analysis.”
The center also continues to generate and distribute a structured and prioritized list of biological threats that it tracks globally to share with its federal, state and local partners. But Firoved noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “has significantly increased” both the volume of data NBIC analyzes and the frequency with which it’s had to report out findings across most of its efforts.
Still, officials are turning to technological resources to adapt to the strains.
“NBIC is pursuing efforts like automated web scraping to allow analysts to assemble the data more quickly,” Firoved said. “We automate distribution through other organizations’ portals, freeing up considerable analyst time so they can focus on gathering and interpreting data.”
He also shed light on how the center’s work and personnel internally have shifted since the early days of the initial COVID-19 outbreak.
Firoved said that when the health event was first identified, the center reported it in daily biosurveillance procedures. As the coronavirus spead to wider regions in China, and then to areas outside of the country, NBIC “increased its operational tempo” and devoted an entire team of analysts to COVID-19 reporting and surveillance. And then as it became increasingly clear that human-to-human spread was a driving factor of transmission, the center increased its operational tempo “to the highest level.”
“Recently, as the domestic concern has increased, NBIC stood up two separate teams to ensure that enough staff are still available if one team became sick or quarantined,” Firoved said.
(Night Watchman Note: What will happen when millions of Christians suddenly ‘disappear’ in the ‘twinkling of an eye”??? Those who may be first-responders, doctors, nurses, support staff, policemen, firefighters, farmers, homeless volunteers, those in the red cross or other emergency aid and relief organizations, in the national guard or military, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc. You get the picture.)
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:
The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)
A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.
. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).
B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.
. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).
. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).
. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).
. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).
. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).
. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).
. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).
. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).
True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:
Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
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