Scriptoria’s Data Team have just built and rolled out a cloud-based multi-dimensional data Cube for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded West African Virus Epidemiology (WAVE) programme. Bringing together laboratory and field survey data from more than five years of research, the Cube allows WAVE’s scientists to much more efficiently analyse data on cassava diseases from 10 countries across West and Central Africa. The aim is to provide solutions that will help to avoid major food crises that are likely to be caused by new diseases sweeping in from other parts of Africa to affect what is a major food crop in this part of the world.

Rolled out to the WAVE team at a recent workshop in Côte d’Ivoire, the Cube built by Scriptoria’s Data Team allows WAVE’s scientists to explore their data very quickly, from a whole range of new perspectives (‘dimensions’). Being able to easily cross-cut dimensions such as locations surveyed, crop symptoms, and levels of disease incidence and severity – across multiple countries and multiple years – is a game changer for this programme.

Plus, because it is aggregated in the Cube, the data can now be easily accessed, visualised and manipulated by the scientists themselves using simple software such as PowerBI. This means that users can rapidly generate maps, tables and graphs from a huge data-set without needing help from programmers or data scientists – making it much easier for them to identify disease hotspots where control efforts can be targeted and disease-free locations where clean planting materials can be produced.

Using the data in this way means that the WAVE management team can now much more easily draw disease trends and hotspots to the attention of governments, allowing them to make policy decisions about the actions needed in specific areas of the country or region.

After the roll out and demonstration, WAVE’s programme Director, Dr Justin Pita said that the Cube is “a powerful and useful tool that is also easy to use”. And the feedback from the rest of his team was universally positive as well, with Dr Angela Eni (one WAVE’s Country Team Leaders) stating “the power comes from being able to integrate different data sources in one ‘pot’: I’m so happy to see lab data integrated with survey data”.

For more information about the support that Scriptoria provides to researchers on their projects, please contact enquiries@scriptoria.co.uk.