The University of the Republic of San Marino is contributing to the development of a platform that, by analyzing information from websites and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, can promptly report the spread of communicable diseases such as the COVID-19 coronavirus, thus enabling appropriate interventions to prevent the spread of the infection.
The announcement was made by Roberto Mugavero, director of the Security Training Center at the University of San Marino: "The project," the academic explains, "has enabled the development of a system capable of identifying in advance both information whose evidence is not yet immediately clear, and data that could be considered nonexistent simply because it is impossible to develop effective search, correlation, and verification activities, especially on large volumes of information."
In short, the system is based on the search for a series of "key elements" that can indicate whether there is evidence of an anomalous event in a given area. In the biological case, these are symptoms or indicators that, when detected, prompt further investigation. For example, if many people in the same location experience common issues and share them on social networks, as well as open and publicly accessible sources, the system can detect what is happening and raise an initial alarm. "The biggest challenge, in this regard, was developing a platform capable of correctly identifying the meanings, forms, declinations, and conjugations of text content related to a specific event," Mugavero emphasizes. "This is to avoid linguistic misunderstandings, associate correct synonyms, and also find other ways to express the same information. For example, a headache can be written as such, but it can also be defined as a cephalea or migraine. To address this, the system we developed adopted solutions that allow for semantic analysis of texts and enable us to understand the meaning of each word in its specific context. Our goal," concludes the director of the Security Training Center at the University of San Marino, "is to create an optimal synergy between artificial intelligence and human intelligence so as to be able to provide data of primary importance in the early detection and counteraction of potential threats such as the one the world is currently facing with the globalized emergency related to the Coronavirus."
The project, launched in 2019, involves the University of San Marino together with the CBRNe Security and Defense Observatory – OSDIFE, the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University of Rome 'Tor Vergata' and Expert System SPA.
