TowerScout is a tool for identifying cooling towers from satellite and aerial imagery. Cooling towers are potential sources of Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires' disease. TowerScout has been utilized in over 12 investigations of outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease across 8 states since 2021. It can be used after outbreaks to identify potential sources of Legionella, and it can be used before outbreaks to build and update a registry of cooling towers to aid future investigations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have procedures for identifying cooling towers during investigation of an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, which can be significantly sped up by using TowerScout. TowerScout has been used in more than 12 investigations of outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease across 8 states since 2021. In 2021, TowerScout was the Hal Varian Award Winner for the Master of Information and Data Science Program (MIDS) in the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
TowerScout has been used by local health departments:
- The the Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) used TowerScout for detecting cooling towers in aerial imagery.
- The Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS (eGIS) team and Department of Public Health used TowerScout to build an initial dataset of likely cooling tower locations across the County. The work was the 2023 NACo Achievement Award Winner, Information Technology (Best in Category).
Karen K Wong,
Jia Lu,
Gunnar Mein,
Thaddeus Segura.
Fred Nugen,
Alberto Todeschini,
Elizabeth J Hannapel,
Jasen M Kunz,
Troy Ritter,
Jessica C Smith, and
Chris Edens helped guide the project.
Please cite the following publication and this GitHub repository when utilizing TowerScout:
- Wong KK, Segura T, Mein G, Lu J, Hannapel EJ, Kunz JM, Ritter T, Smith JC, Todeschini A, Nugen F, Edens C. Automated cooling tower detection through deep learning for Legionnaires’ disease outbreak investigations: a model development and validation study. Lancet Digit Health. 2024;6(7):e500-e506. doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(24)00094-3
- Wong KK, Segura T, Mein G, Lu J, Hannapel EJ, Kunz JM, Ritter T, Smith JC, Todeschini A, Nugen F, Edens C. (2024). TowerScout [Computer software]. https://github.com/TowerScout/TowerScout
This is a proof of concept and is not intended for commercial use. Users should adhere to terms of service when using tools and resources from any imagery and data providers.
Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0. (See LICENSE.TXT in the root of the repository for details.)