platform
Ebola prevention and control
A platform to simulate the spread of Ebola in a social setting and evaluate prevention and control strategies.
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Decision makers
- Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)
- United Nations (UN), in particular the World Health Organization (WHO)
- Red Cross of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (CRRDC) and its Dignified and Safe Burial team
- Doctors, practitioners and ONGs operating in situations where epidemics are spreading
Objectives
To help decision makers test different approaches in their fight against epidemics, in particular Ebola.
Deliverables
A simulator and user interface that decision makers can use to test different conditions.
Data attributes
Context
Decision makers are monitoring a epidemic spreading in a community in which multiple actors are present. These actors can look positively or negatively towards external help, doctors and international organizations.
The situation can be described by the following attributes:
- a geographical region under study (e.g. a village, maybe with a hospital or a dispensary)
- a community, with:
- different groups of people or individuals
- a behavior for each of these groups or individuals
- some level of infection in the community
- a virus and its characteristics:
- Transmission mode: contact-based (e.g. Ebola), airborne (e.g. COVID19), vectorborne (e.g. Malaria via mosquitoes)
- a R0
Actions
Decision makers can choose between different approaches to fight the epidemic:
- suggest the use, carry and distribution of Personal Protection Equipment
- develop and distribute vaccines with different percentages of efficacy
- do widespread communication campaign
- actively fight misinformation
- build and manage hospitals
- recommend Dignified and Safe Burial practices
The platform allows the introduction of different agents and actors in the simulator to evaluate their possible behaviors.
Outcomes
Decision makers are evaluated on the following outcomes:
- Spread of the epidemic
- Death toll
- Cost of the interventions
Code
- The code for this project is available here: TerraLingua Pandemics
- The code for the simulation configuration tool is available here: TerraLingua Launcher
Needs
List of needs:
- Contacts with decision makers
- UI/UX experts
- Biologists
- Sociologists
References
- TerraLingua is the platform on top of which the simulator is built. Paper - OpenSource Code
- Epydemix is a platform that can help finetune the virus parameters in the simulation
- Recent set of recommendations for the fight against Ebola from the WHO
- Information about the community engagement and communal burials, which seem to be critical aspects in this fight
- The way the virus spreads and kills people has been modeled following the information from WHO
- The work of the Red Cross volunteers on the ground
Discussion
Use this discussion space to share your thoughts, ideas, and feedback about the project: Ebola prevention and control discussion