A bio-surveillance system monitors symptoms or groups of symptoms experiencedby people in a geographical area. The system tracks symptoms reported by callsto an emergency service dispatcher. The bio-surveillance system monitors thesymptoms and associates the geographical location with the symptoms. Varioustriggers are programmed and stored in the system to look for certain types ofthreats. Each trigger is set based on a statistical variation of thehistorical data relating to the symptoms within a predetermined time in apredefined geographical area. When the reported symptoms exceed one of thetriggers, an alert is activated to provide an indication of a potentialbiological or chemical terrorist attack.
