Health Policy and Management


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William C. Bell

Senior Research Scientist



University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
706.542.6374 (voice)
706.583.0695 (fax)



Educational Background

Ph.D., University of Edinburgh
M.A. (Hons) University of Edinburgh
UN OCHA FIS Emergency Response Team trained / certified


Area of Specialty

Dr. Bell has in international reputation in spatial information management, especially large integrated data warehouses applied to large area geographic information system data and field collected data. He has over 20 years of world wide experience in the Middle East, Far East, South, Central, and North America, and Africa in data collection and management with several UN and UN related agencies and national aid organizations. During this time he had links to over 25 universities in 10 countries through support for graduate student and faculty research. For seven years Dr Bell was Senior Information Scientist and later Chief Information Officer at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture where he supervised the largest collections of geospatial data in Latin America. Dr. Bell then moved to take up the position of Director of Information Technology Outreach Services at the University of Georgia where he continued to build large spatial databases for the State and the Federal Government. He also conceived, built, housed, and maintained the UN interagency spatial database for the UN�s world spatial data under contract to UN�s OCHA. Dr. Bell brought in over 30 million dollars in contracts and grants to fund these initiatives. Since 2002 Dr Bell has spent time with UN missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sudan, as well as time with the Center for Mass Destruction Defense. His work now focuses on the management and care of large numbers of internally displaced people and on planning and exercising for large weapons of mass destruction events and natural disasters and their impacts on the health care system.

William started working on Atomic Energy Commission of Canada radiation dispersion modeling projects in the 1970s. Since then, he has worked equally on modeling and simulation, large data warehouses, and field data collection systems in areas affected by civil and guerilla wars especially in Latin America and Africa. In 2001 he delivered an agro-terrorism modeling and decision support system for the Department of Agriculture�s APHIS which was deployed to several other states. In 2001-2 he prepared an interagency UN data warehouses for the UN�s OCHA and a large GIS database for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. In 2004 he helped prepare the Strategic Plan for Transition to a National Catastrophic Incident for G-8 Conference on Sea Island, Georgia. He recently modeled 23 high risk cities in the United States for nuclear events. He has extensively modified DTRA models for thermal, blast and casualty estimations and extended their use for block level analysis. He has worked for UN OCHA as a Senior Information Manager focusing on IDP issues and priority setting in civil war/guerrilla environments in Sudan, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. From 1992-1999 he worked on diverse projects in Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Honduras and Nicaragua. From 1983-1988 he deployed to Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. Recent work has included the detailed design of simulations for pandemic influenza and weapons of mass destruction incidents for hospital exercises, including a state-wide, 129 hospital exercise for Georgia.

Research Interests

Custom simulation and impact of natural disaster and weapons of mass destruction events using large geo-spatial databases; Disaster Management and Response for both domestic and international events; Hospital exercise design and exercise execution; internally displaced person and mass casualty management. Societal breakdown under civil strife/civil war.

Professional Affiliations

William is a Senior Research Scientist in the University of Georgia Center for Mass Destruction Defense specializing in WMD modeling, mass casualty estimation, exercise development and execution, and management and care of large numbers of internally displaced persons due to civil war or large natural disasters. He is also a faculty member in the Department of Health Administration, Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the College of Public Health where he teaches. William also deploys on short assignments in the early stages of major disasters. Recent deployments have included Sudan, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone.

Senior Research Scientist, Department of Health Administration, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, College of Public Health 2006 -
Program Coordinator , Center for Mass Destruction Defense, University of Georgia 2004-
Senior Information Management Specialist, United Nations OCHA 2003-2004
Director, Information Technology Outreach Services, University of Georgia 1999-2002
Chief Information Officer, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) 1996-1999
Senior Information Management Specialist, CIAT 1992-1996
Senior Public Service Associate in Information Management, Institute of Government, University of Georgia, 1991- 92
Vice-President (Technology), SNC-Lavalin Linnet 1989-1991
Professor, Business Computing and GIS, University of Winnipeg 1983-1991
Lecturer to Associate Professor, University of Winnipeg 1966-1983
Publications/Honors: Editor, International Journal of Geographic Information Science 1994-1999