Biocomplexity and a New Public Health Domain

Excerpt

Extraordinary progress has been made in science and engineering over the past several decades, notably in information science and technology, systems engineering, and the biological sciences. What has been most striking, however, is the blurring of the boundaries between these and other disciplines. What were quite separate areas of study have become interdisciplinary wellsprings of new knowledge, providing important new benefits to society. Human health and medicine have, without question, benefited from advances in molecular biology, fundamental chemistry, physics, and mathematics. But a new frontier in scientific exploration provides the next leap for the health sciences, namely the integration of the ecological sciences, conservation biology, system engineering, and medicine. Ecosystems analyses from investments made in biocomplexity are proving insightful. Most striking is merging of what were considered disparate databases and rendering these interoperable through advances in information science and technology. Very large data sets accumulated by ecologists, toxicologists, public health scientists, climatologists, and atmospheric scientists are now being merged and mined to yield new understanding and fundamental principles previously unrecognized because of limitations arising from disparate and unlinked systems. These advances are being made at a time when the most pressing problems facing human populations in today’s world are complex, global, and no longer amenable to simple solutions. …