Petra Muellner
Director (Science & Data)
Epi-interactive
Petra Muellner is an epidemiologist and Director (Science & Data) at Epi-interactive. Her work is international and spans multiple disciplines including projects on disease / one health intelligence, risk assessment and preparedness for global diseases outbreaks, biosecurity and surveillance from COVID-19 to Avian Influenza, Food-and Mouth Disease to antimicrobial resistance, food-borne illness and invasive species. Petra is the past Editor-in-Chief of the NZ Veterinary Journal, past Head Examiner (Epidemiology) of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Science and holds an adjunct position at Massey University. She has also been working for 10+ years on demand as a consultant for the Rome Headquarter of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Ripple - Using open-source tools to turn complex data into applied intelligence
eDNA data has the potential to improve our ability to make science-based decisions across a wide range of objectives – from community efforts to biosecurity risk management to large scale ecological and conservation measures. However, if the insights created are fragmented and do not connect with decision making in accessible ways, eDNA will fail to live up to its potential.
The data outputs of metabarcoding data are undeniable, but how these are converted into outcomes for the technology is still a work in progress. The core challenge in making eDNA accessible is the need to embrace complexity yet distil data and insights into a format that is easy to digest, visual and connects eDNA with a wide diversity of stakeholder groups.
Highly customized code-driven dashboards built with open-source software such as R, create an opportunity to bridge this gap and drive collaboration and stakeholder engagement. Utilizing know-how from the development of complex disease intelligence tools such as OpenFMD and Epidemix we developed an open-source based application that allows users to share and visualise eDNA data. The functionality can be highly customized to meet the wide range of activities that eDNA can support – from incursion management to state of the environment reporting.
In this talk we share both the front-end challenges as well as the dev ops practices required to scale Ripple from an idea to a full-blown data science solution.