Robert Allison, SAS Institute Inc, Robert.Allison@sas.com
SAS Software
In Mini-Challenge 1, you used micro-blog data to characterize an epidemic spread. In Mini-Challenge 2, you conducted cyber security analysis for situational awareness of a corporate network infrastructure. In Mini-Challenge 3, you investigated terrorist activity in the region.
For the Grand Challenge, you are charged with investigating the cause of the epidemic.
In particular, you need to address the following:
Yes, I believe the epidemic might have been triggered by a "terrorist" (ie, a person intentionally doing something to expose/infect people).
And my #1 suspect would be Edward Patino, the molecular biologist who is an expert in bioterrorism, and who has recently reached his "breaking point" (as described in the May 18th news article).
The 3 news articles indicate Patino is an expert in bioterrorism & computers, and he was also in a very "frustrated" mental state. In police jargon, he had the means, motive, and opportunity to have been a bioterrorist and released an epidemic.
Here are the news articles about Patino, leading up to the epidemic outbreak. Note that the day Patino had his "episode" (May 18) is the day the epidemic started.
Perhaps Patino bought the laptop to hack into the shipping company's computer system from a computer that couldn't be traced back to him (rather than his home computer, or work computer). And the security logs do indicate that the security was weak on the shipping company's network & computers. Once he hacked into their system, he found out what trucks were delivering food/supplies to the downtown Dome, the outdoor street festival, and the Convention center, and he then sneaked his bio contaminant onto those trucks.
The epidemic appears to have started Downtown, in the following three areas: the Vastopolis Dome (left side of the dense red color), the middle Downtown section (middle area of dense red color), and the Convention Center (right side of dense red color, in the map below).
There was a basketball tournament in the Dome, a festival Downtown, and a technology convention in the Convention Center, that day (according to the micro-blogs). The epidemic was possibly sneaked in via food carried by All Freight Corporation's trucks, and once the food was opened it was also carried in the air - the wind was coming from the west, and therefore the epidemic spread across downtown towards the east. (There was also a fire at the convention center that might have been related to the spread, but I don't see any micro-blogs about a similar fire in the Dome, so I'm tempted to rule that out.)
Later, some of the bio contaminant found its way to the river, and traveled downstream prompting a fish kill (which was described in the May 19th news article titled "Dead Fish Reported in River"), also infecting more people along the river.
Later (friday night), as the symptoms of the illness got more serious, people started flooding to the hospitals (as shown in the red "clumps" of blogs in the map below):
Since the micro-blogs from people complaining about symptoms seem to have started while they were at the Dome & Convention center (rather than being something that infects them, incubates, and then starts symptoms days later), the bio contaminant seems to be very fast-acting. Also, the micro-blogs seem to be limited to mainly the areas where people were directly infected, and then the areas of the hospitals - this indicates that the epidemic is probably the result of direct exposure to the bio-contaminant, rather than transmitted person-to-person.