Bird's eye view of Carnegie Mellon University campus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, $3 million in research funding over five years in exchange for being an Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence, reports TRIB Live.

The university earned the funding because its Delphi Research Group has proven to be the most accurate of any organization involved in the CDC’s FluSight Network.

The purpose of the FluSight Network is to forecast when a flu season will strike, when it will peak, and how severe it will be. The results of the findings are then used to help health officials plan for the flu.

Carnegie Mellon University gets its flu forecast data using two resources. The first resource involves computational statistics that are able to predict qualities of the flu based on both past patterns and reports made to the CDC. The other data is gathered by human volunteers.

Forecasting the flu well can do wonders for the public, as well as companies tasked with keeping facilities cleaned, as another CleanLink story published today suggests.