Generating Synthetic Syndromic-Surveillance Data for Evaluating Visual-Analytics Techniques.

The article presents information on a computer application which generates data for use in evaluating visual analytics. Information visualization techniques can be tested using simulated nonaggregated public health surveillance data, which is based on actual syndromic surveillance data sets collected from emergency room departments. The system synthesizes two years worth of data, containing typical seasonal illness trends, into which disease outbreak signals can be arbitrarily placed. Other factors which can be manipulated include spatio-temporal distribution and demographic probabilities.