Situation Awareness

The mission of the Situation Awareness (SA) Branch is to improve public health emergency planning and response. By analyzing critical information about many kinds of hazards that can affect public health, we turn this information into tools that leaders and responders can use to help people stay safer and healthier.

What we do

We gather, organize, check, and share information to help leaders and responders make science-based decisions and actionable recommendations.

We collect, analyze, and validate important information about public health emergencies by:

  • Collect and analyze data from many sources;
  • Provide secure and adaptable systems for gathering and sharing data;
  • Check the data and our analyses to be sure they are as accurate as possible; and
  • Provide recommendations on the process and systems used to collect, analyze and validate this information.

We turn data and analyses into accessible, easy-to-use tools by:

  • Creating reports, charts, maps, databases and more;
  • Ensuring that information is clear and accessible;
  • Using processes, tools, and information to predict future circumstances;
  • Working with partners to develop and maintain resources that support information-sharing.

We share this information with partners by:

  • Collaborating with the Incident Management Sections;
  • Developing open-sourced, interactive, web-based tools for information sharing;
  • Developing standard operating procedures (SOP), memorandums of understanding (MOUs), and trainings to support information/knowledge management.
Red Sky Map

Red Sky is one of the tools CDC uses to gather and share information to improve responses to public health emergencies.