Big Data Mining on Health Informatics Data for Cities.

Advancements in modern technologies has generated and collected very large volumes of data at a rapid rate. Embedded in these big data is implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful information and knowledge. This explains why big data are often considered as a new oil. Discovered knowledge may help cities to enhance performance and well-being, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. To elaborate, discovered knowledge from digital technologies may support urban and transportation analytics for smart cities. Discovered knowledge from healthcare data and disease reports may support and enhance decision or policy making for the well-being of citizens within a city. For example, analyzing and mining health informatics data—such as COVID-19 epidemiological data—for cities help decision markers get a better understanding of the disease and come up with ways to detect, control and combat the disease. It also help them prepare for the needs of their citizens (e.g., needs for hospital beds in regular wards or ICU, needs of patients of different age groups). Hence, in this paper, we present a solution for big data mining on health informatics data for cities. Specifically, we mine COVID-19 epidemiological data with spatial and demographic hierarchies capturing characteristics of COVID-19 patients. Evaluation on real-life COVID-19 data demonstrates the practicality of our solution.