Date of Award

Spring 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

4-26-2028

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Program

Biostatistics

First Advisor

Edward Valachovic

Committee Members

Erika Martin, Edward Valachovic, Rachel Hart-Malloy, Petko Bogdanov

Keywords

Anomaly detection, disease surveillance

Subject Categories

Applied Statistics | Biostatistics | Epidemiology | Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series | Vital and Health Statistics

Abstract

Determining the time and location of potential disease outbreaks is a critical component of disease surveillance. As the syphilis epidemic in the United States evolves, identifying high-risk areas and populations enables public health agencies to mitigate its impact. Although anomaly detection methods have been applied to routinely collected surveillance data, rapid advances across disparate fields have outpaced their implementation for outbreak detection. This dissertation 1) compares the performance of several existing anomaly detection methods using real-time spatiotemporal syphilis data 2) develops a new anomaly detection method, TGSD-STARMA, and 3) demonstrates the ability of TGSD-STARMA to detect potential syphilis outbreaks in real-time.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

Available for download on Wednesday, April 26, 2028

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