Grant: Planning/Dissemination Grants - IPPH - ICS - Artificial Intelligence - General

Diarrheal diseases were responsible for more than 1.3 million deaths, including 400,000 among children less than five years of age, globally in 2015. This burden is primarily borne by the marginalized poor in the global South-in neglected rural areas, in urban slums, and in refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Other emerging and re-emerging waterborne threats such as hepatitis E and cholera likewise present the threat of potentially catastrophic outbreaks for these populations. In these contexts, safe, treated water that has been chlorinated is essential for protecting public health and preventing potentially catastrophic outbreaks. Water quality-chlorine in particular-is therefore an important factor in understanding the levels of waterborne diseases affecting populations around the world. Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches could help us to better understand the relationship between water quality and waterborne diseases among different populations in the global south, including in urban slums and in refugee/IDP camps. More importantly, AI approaches could potentially be used to develop tools that help us to predict when waterborne diseases outbreaks might occur, simply by looking at widely available water quality data. Predictive tools like this could help public health practitioners globally develop early warning systems for waterborne disease outbreaks such that preventative measures can be taken to limit their extent or prevent them altogether.