Norovirus outbreak detection using tweets

A norovirus outbreak happened in France and was caused by raw shellfish and oysters. Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands have all also reported outbreaks linked to live oysters from France. Symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting and incubation times, are consistent with norovirus or other enteric virus infections.

The number of people in France who have become ill after eating contaminated raw shellfish has jumped to more than 1,000. The outbreak has spurred international product recalls and many medias have talked about the Norovirus epidemic.

Social media services such as Twitter are valuable sources of information for surveillance systems. A digital syndromic surveillance system has several advantages including its ability to overcome the problem of time delay in traditional surveillance systems.

In this project, a Twitter-based data analysis system was developed to analyze the textual content of a set of tweets and see if there are any evidence of the Norovirus outbreak in France or Switzerland.