Abstract
Cities of the future will need to monitor pathogen mutations in animal and human populations to anticipate species crossings causing pandemics. They will need to prepare these populations with sentinels to detect early warning signals, and with exercises simulating pandemics in places where there is a high volume of living traffic (markets, hospitals, airports, etc.). Cities will indeed be vulnerable to the emergence of pathogens, due to their position at the crossroads of flows of people and goods. This diagnosis will be illustrated by the avian flu management systems in Hong Kong and Istanbul.
