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Reference: All the information and images below are credited to netflix documentary

• There are about 1.5M viruses in the wild that are not known to us, and have the potential to jump into the human realm and causing pandemics like the COVID19. Such viruses that interfere with human life to survive and thrive are called Zoonotic viruses.

• Since decades zoonotic viruses are causing outbreaks with no vaccines for treatement.
  Ex: SARSCOV2002 and MERS2012 coronaviruses, that killed in 100s.
  

• And then there is epidemic like COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which occured almost after a century and has killed in 1000s. COVID-19 is the disease.SARS-CoV-2 is the virus which is one among 7 coronaviruses.

• There are 7 types of coronaviruses known among which SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are detrimental than HCoV
  

• Viruses like these need a host to survive like us,humans and their chance of survival increases if the host doesn't fall sick. For instance, the virus that caused covid-19 is often paired with bats in the news and other media because amalgamated with bats and did not bother them,however, there are debilitating effects when such a virus intrudes into the human world, and is insidious during the transmission.
  This is exactly what happened with SARS in 2002, it emerged in an animal market in China where the meat being sold was infected when the animal made contact with a bat infected with SARS.
  Since then EcoHealth Alliance, a scientific group is making errands to bat caves in southern china and examining bats for coronaviruses, and alert the public. The process is risky...IoT can interfere here and help in expediting. A few years back researchers found a low-risk virus in bats called RaTG13 and later moved on since it did not impose any risk to humans, now while genome sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 they found a 96% match with the RaTG13 virus..they believe SARS-CoV-2 evolved from RaTG13.
  The researchers were looking for SARS family of virus and overlooked RaTG13 since it did not seem a threat at the time of test. It is impossible to predict all forms of evolution of a virus.

• So how did the virus evolve?

  • The virus might have mutated by jumping from bats to some other animal/reptile/fish before getting to humans.
    The closest virus similar to SARS-CoV-2 was in 1918 when a bird with a flu and a human with a flu met the same pig. The human virus and bird virus combined in a cell of the pig and produced H1N1

• Organisations like the WHO have limited resources and work on voluntray fundings, they elicited a blueprint in 2005 harbingering a pandemic of such a scale, and again later in September 2019 a WHO report warned of an outbreak due to a respiratory pathogen but none took heed due to inadequate use of information.

• Taking heed and early precautions can stop the spread by as much as 95%, which is as shown below

Strangely, we live in the information age, and yet the crux of the pandemic problem was poor communication. Had the information of virus spread reached out to the public on their intimate devices(smartphones) and to the relevant authorities, perhaps such a catastrophe could have been prevented.

IoT enabled sensors like the Telstra Captis for data logging can be used to monitor environments in the wild, using sophisticated devices installed in wildlife, like the bat caves, to record relevant data to pandemic research and send it forth automatically for analysis without any human intervention. Also, placing these IoT devices in regional and urban areas like the streets or shopping malls or restaurants, we can monitor public gatherings and alert each other of the situation, Urban computing can be leveraged for this, which is a growing field that heavily relies on IoT. These IoT devices can also provide intelligent insights with TinyML like TensorFlow Lite that supports the Arduino family, which is used by Telstra's IoT network. Blockchain is required only to ensure data integrity, data that doesn't reflect the actual context of a situation is as good as having none, especially when it is being used to support survival. NB-IoT seems to be the more appropriate choice for monitoring environment since we are not focusing at tracking the animals but rather their harbouring places, which can be anywhere in wildlife. Strategically installing NB-IoT with the help of wildlife experts that study movement of animals, I believe we have a better chance of preventing such catastrophes in the future and preventing the wild from intruding the humankind. If the researchers find anything suspicious they can alert the government, which can then e-mail, send messages on phones alerting the public. It is also crucial to update the IoT installed in public places as mentioned above to be updated and act accordingly. These IoT devices with TinyML can use intelligence to inform public and authorities to take appropriate measures and act swiftly at the onset, the gap between the outbreak and reaction can be abated by as much as 95% as mentioned above.

IoT can be used efficiently to bridge the gap between wildlife and humanlife; also natural disasters like the Australian bushfires 2019-20 can be tackled, reducing the debilitating ramifications it has on the life and the economy.

Likewise, installing IoT devices including the Cat-M1 that are suitable for tracking mobility can be used to prevent industrial hazards. The recent accident in Lebanon occured due to the combustion of Ammonium Nitrate, which is a dormant chemical under appropriate meteorological conditions like air temperature, pressure etc. The Analysts reported that the accident occured because there was an oil spill that catalysed the combustion leading to the unfortunate incident. Australia is a global leader in the mining industry and is home to some of the rich minerals that are mined incessantly, there might be a potential for such a hazard. Employing appropriate measures that can track, analyse and inform the authorities (or take automated action) about such details will help in ensuring a safe place for all.