Urban and natural environmental areas are complex systems, with complexity arising from interactions between social, biologic and environmental agents & processes. These processes take place on multiple spatial, temporal and contextual scales. Understanding these interactions & their interdependencies is  key to developing effective environmental & health policies. The success of such policies hinges on:

1. • Processing and integration of large amounts of highly variable, uncertain and diverse surveillance information;
   

2. • Process-based, multi-scale mathematical models of ecosystem  dynamics, pathogen molecular evolution, fate & transport, human exposure & disease transmission;
   

3. •  Uncertainty & risk assessment
   

4. •  Incorporation of intervention strategies into the models.
   

We are developing an integrated systems-based analytical framework to study the impact of environmental factors and man-made infrastructure on water quality & waterborne infectious diseases. The framework is needed for:

1. •  Identification of pathogen sources & distribution factors
   

2. •  Risk assessment
   

3. •  Prediction of large scale contaminant fate & transport
   

4. •  Prediction of disease patterns
   

5. •  Development of rapid response measures
   

6. •  Design and evaluation of optimal environmental policies
   

7. • Prediction, prevention & control strategies for disease outbreaks