The Silicon Valley technology giant Facebook is trying to fight the spread of infectious diseases by using its hoards of data.
On Monday, Facebook announced disease prevention maps.
These sets of Maps will be available to health organisations and NGOs giving valuable information like population density, movement of people etc.
As this information will help health organizations to have a better understanding of people's activity, with the purpose of learning how infectious diseases and eruption might arise and evolve, and the best possible way to stop them.
Facebook has previously produced relative maps to help resource organisations to respond successfully after natural hazards.
Facebook uses its hoards of data collected from 2.38 billion users to build maps.
The collected data helps maps to show how populations are moving from one location to another in a selected area, and its network coverage maps that shows the range of cellular coverage in a region.
Besides its own data, Facebook uses outside data sources to design maps, namely commercially available datasets.
The disease prevention maps are the most advanced but not the first step of Facebook towards humanitarian issues.
Facebook previously designed maps that help aid groups who deal with natural disasters like earthquakes and forest fires, and the company is expanding to tackle health crises.
Facebook is providing early access to a selected group of partners to the new disease prevention maps, including the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, the World Economic Forum, International Medical Corps, Harvard School of Public Health and the World Bank. However, the tech giant isn't selling access to the data.
Facebook is also giving access to Northeastern University and UNICEF.
Read next: Facebook is Pushing Hard for the News Feed to Display Quality Content to Achieve User Satisfaction!
On Monday, Facebook announced disease prevention maps.
These sets of Maps will be available to health organisations and NGOs giving valuable information like population density, movement of people etc.
As this information will help health organizations to have a better understanding of people's activity, with the purpose of learning how infectious diseases and eruption might arise and evolve, and the best possible way to stop them.
Facebook has previously produced relative maps to help resource organisations to respond successfully after natural hazards.
Facebook uses its hoards of data collected from 2.38 billion users to build maps.
The collected data helps maps to show how populations are moving from one location to another in a selected area, and its network coverage maps that shows the range of cellular coverage in a region.
Besides its own data, Facebook uses outside data sources to design maps, namely commercially available datasets.
The disease prevention maps are the most advanced but not the first step of Facebook towards humanitarian issues.
Facebook previously designed maps that help aid groups who deal with natural disasters like earthquakes and forest fires, and the company is expanding to tackle health crises.
Facebook is providing early access to a selected group of partners to the new disease prevention maps, including the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, the World Economic Forum, International Medical Corps, Harvard School of Public Health and the World Bank. However, the tech giant isn't selling access to the data.
Facebook is also giving access to Northeastern University and UNICEF.
Read next: Facebook is Pushing Hard for the News Feed to Display Quality Content to Achieve User Satisfaction!
