Snow's case revisited: new tool in geographic profiling of epidemiology

ABSTRACT

Abstract Geographic Profiling technique is used to find the origin of a series of crimes. The method was recently extended to other fields. One of the best renowned data in epidemiology is that by John Snow during an outburst of cholera in London. We wrote Python scripts to perform the analyses to apply the Geographic Profiling for individuating the starting origin of an infection by using the old Snow's data set. We modified the method by applying a weight to each point of the map where cases of cholera were reported. The weight was proportional to the number of cases in a given location.This modification of the Geographic Profiling method allowed to individuate in the map an area of maximum probability of the infection source, which was a few meters wide and including the historically known source of cholera, that is the "classical" water pump at Broad Street.The method appears to be a useful complement in order to individuate the source of epidemics when available data about the cases of the infections can be summarized on a map.