An online tool simulates COVID-19 exit strategy planning for nearly 100 countries assessing various restrictive measures implemented in different countries around the world.
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The tool, called COVID-19 Adaptive Exit Strategies Simulator, has been developed by a team of researchers at the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), led by SnT Vice-Director Prof. Yves Le Traon. It helps to model the impact of different national policies aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 and provides a data-driven approach to the evaluation of the COVID-19 reproduction rate (Rt).
Using machine learning techniques, the simulator analyses publicly available
data, eg from the Google COVID-19 datasets and from Johns Hopkins University. The
analysis is based on a number of variables, such as workplaces, parks and outdoor
activities, public transportation, retail and recreation, and essential groceries.
To obtain projections on the impact of different public health measures on the
spread of infection over a six-month period, a user needs to select a country
from a list and adjust intensity values for each of the isolation measures.
A screenshot of the COVID-19 Adaptive Exit Strategies Simulator's interface (part)
The beta version of the simulator is available here and an explanatory
presentation can be viewed here.
The instrument has been released for two reasons, namely to make it available
to the public as quickly as possible, considering the time-sensitive nature of
these data for public health policies, and to get the feedback from users. Since
the simulator is a project in progress, the latter will help the researchers to
update and improve the machine-learning algorithm that drives it. Furthermore,
the team is looking at the possibility to expand the simulator’s customisation
features in the future by including datasets from the World Health Organisation
or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
According to Prof. Le Traon, today every piece of data has the potential to
impact the lives of people around the world. “Given the enormous amount of data
to analyse, we have developed this tool to support exit strategy planning. As
many countries in Europe are beginning to execute on their plans already, we
wanted to release our work as soon as possible,” he said.
Source: University
of Luxemburg
Image credit: SnT
