BlinkGeo pointed to this terrific article The Great Health Mashup.

It summarizes the benefits of aggregating and visualizing multiple geospatial data streams together to aid with awareness and decision making. In this specific case, it is used to monitor health conditions - but the same ideas and technologies can be applied to numerous other domains.

In fact, these tools become really powerful when you merge together disparate data sets. As the article points out, overlaying weather and ambulance tracking, both aspects of a health crisis that may otherwise be overlooked or difficult to access as a health care advisor. They even combined in user content, though in the form of polls. A system could also make use of distributed, web or mobile based reporting and aggregated.

There have been other similar reports by the World Health Organization on Public Health Mapping and GIS, and there is the HealthMap global disease alert map. Verner Vinge’s novel Rainbows End began with just such a scenario where school kids found an outbreak of a lung disease based on a drop in work attendance, traffic, and rise in ambient temperature. This sounds far-fetched, but the article points out where “by aggregating their mapping data, officials were able to forecast West Nile virus activity by dead bird clusters.“.

The power of these tools is exactly what we’re building with Mapufacture - the ability for non geospatial experts to combine dynamic, and potentially complex geospatial data for visualization, analysis and collaboration. Additionally, the output of these tools should be shareable - the aggregated data offered for other applications and organizations to bring into their systems.

It is incredibly exciting to see the benefit of geospatial aggregation realized and utilized in such important domains.