1. A global disease surveillance platform for identifying, determining, and analyzing potential public health events and monitoring responses thereto, comprising: an interface configured by computer-executable instructions to: receives external information feeds comprising structured and unstructured data; transform the structured and unstructured data into a schema consistent with a schema of the platform; extract meta-data from the structured and unstructured data, index the meta-data, and relate the meta-data back to the structured and unstructured data; and store the structured data, the unstructured data, and the meta-data in a storage device; an external services module that provides services to facilitate the responses; and a platform processor coupled to the interface and the external services module and configured by computer-executable instructions to: analyze the meta-data in relation to one or more thresholds and to trigger transmission of a public health alert by an alert module; and identify, evaluate, tag, and correlate the structured data, the unstructured data, and the corresponding meta-data to produce a data file related to a specific public health event; and provide real-time user access to the data file for pre-planning, detection, and response to the public health event.