scholarly journals Network interventions for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and sustaining economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (48) ◽  
pp. 30285-30294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiro Nishi ◽  
George Dewey ◽  
Akira Endo ◽  
Sophia Neman ◽  
Sage K. Iwamoto ◽  
...  

Sustaining economic activities while curbing the number of new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases until effective vaccines or treatments become available is a major public health and policy challenge. In this paper, we use agent-based simulations of a network-based susceptible−exposed−infectious−recovered (SEIR) model to investigate two network intervention strategies for mitigating the spread of transmission while maintaining economic activities. In the simulations, we assume that people engage in group activities in multiple sectors (e.g., going to work, going to a local grocery store), where they interact with others in the same group and potentially become infected. In the first strategy, each group is divided into two subgroups (e.g., a group of customers can only go to the grocery store in the morning, while another separate group of customers can only go in the afternoon). In the second strategy, we balance the number of group members across different groups within the same sector (e.g., every grocery store has the same number of customers). The simulation results show that the dividing groups strategy substantially reduces transmission, and the joint implementation of the two strategies could effectively bring the spread of transmission under control (i.e., effective reproduction number ≈ 1.0).

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine F. Jarvis ◽  
Joshua B. Kelley

AbstractColleges and other organizations are considering testing plans to return to operation as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Pre-symptomatic spread and high false negative rates for testing may make it difficult to stop viral spread. Here, we develop a stochastic agent-based model of COVID-19 in a university sized population, considering the dynamics of both viral load and false negative rate of tests on the ability of testing to combat viral spread. Reported dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 can lead to an apparent false negative rate from ~ 17 to ~ 48%. Nonuniform distributions of viral load and false negative rate lead to higher requirements for frequency and fraction of population tested in order to bring the apparent Reproduction number (Rt) below 1. Thus, it is important to consider non-uniform dynamics of viral spread and false negative rate in order to model effective testing plans.


Author(s):  
Le Khanh Ngan Nguyen ◽  
Susan Howick ◽  
Dennis McLafferty ◽  
Gillian H. Anderson ◽  
Sahaya J. Pravinkumar ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (8) ◽  
pp. 170344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thiago Mosqueiro ◽  
Chelsea Cook ◽  
Ramon Huerta ◽  
Jürgen Gadau ◽  
Brian Smith ◽  
...  

Variation in behaviour among group members often impacts collective outcomes. Individuals may vary both in the task that they perform and in the persistence with which they perform each task. Although both the distribution of individuals among tasks and differences among individuals in behavioural persistence can each impact collective behaviour, we do not know if and how they jointly affect collective outcomes. Here, we use a detailed computational model to examine the joint impact of colony-level distribution among tasks and behavioural persistence of individuals, specifically their fidelity to particular resource sites, on the collective trade-off between exploring for new resources and exploiting familiar ones. We developed an agent-based model of foraging honeybees, parametrized by data from five colonies, in which we simulated scouts, who search the environment for new resources, and individuals who are recruited by the scouts to the newly found resources, i.e. recruits. We varied the persistence of returning to a particular food source of both scouts and recruits and found that, for each value of persistence, there is a different optimal ratio of scouts to recruits that maximizes resource collection by the colony. Furthermore, changes to the persistence of scouts induced opposite effects from changes to the persistence of recruits on the collective foraging of the colony. The proportion of scouts that resulted in the most resources collected by the colony decreased as the persistence of recruits increased. However, this optimal proportion of scouts increased as the persistence of scouts increased. Thus, behavioural persistence and task participation can interact to impact a colony's collective behaviour in orthogonal directions. Our work provides new insights and generates new hypotheses into how variations in behaviour at both the individual and colony levels jointly impact the trade-off between exploring for new resources and exploiting familiar ones.


2021 ◽  
Vol 322 ◽  
pp. 05006
Author(s):  
Ina Restuwati ◽  
Achmad K. A. Munif

The purpose of this research was to identify performance and determine the strategy for improving the performance of fish farmers groups in this area, which has excellent and dominant potential in freshwater aquaculture. There were about 131 fish farmers and 11 fish hatchery and rearing groups from this region's six research sample villages. The identification results of the fishbone diagram analysis showed that the fish farmer group's growth and development, in general, were still low, based on several dominant categories, namely infrastructure, fisheries extension performance, contribution performance, and the interests of fish farmers. In detail, the causes were: 1) insufficient facilities and infrastructure; 2) management in implementing fish farmers groups function has not run optimally; 3) the lack of fisheries extension workers; 4) the lack of contribution among group members; 5) relationship between fish farmers groups and local government institutions was still low; 6) fisheries activities were dominated by certain people; and 7) the interests of the fish farmers to form groups were still low. As the results of the SWOT analysis, the fish farmers group's performance development strategy was carried out by improving the performance of group roles and functions through mentoring and facilitating group activities.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0255031
Author(s):  
Hiroyasu Inoue ◽  
Yohsuke Murase ◽  
Yasuyuki Todo

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, many cities, states, and countries have ‘locked down’, restricting economic activities in non-essential sectors. Such lockdowns have substantially shrunk production in most countries. This study examines how the economic effects of lockdowns in different regions interact through supply chains, which are a network of firms for production, by simulating an agent-based model of production using supply-chain data for 1.6 million firms in Japan. We further investigate how the complex network structure affects the interactions between lockdown regions, emphasising the role of upstreamness and loops by decomposing supply-chain flows into potential and circular flow components. We find that a region’s upstreamness, intensity of loops, and supplier substitutability in supply chains with other regions largely determine the economic effect of the lockdown in the region. In particular, when a region lifts its lockdown, its economic recovery substantially varies depending on whether it lifts the lockdown alone or together with another region closely linked through supply chains. These results indicate that the economic effect produced by exogenous shocks in a region can affect other regions and therefore this study proposes the need for inter-region policy coordination to reduce economic loss due to lockdowns.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Yuryevna Aleshina ◽  
Vardan Mkrttchian ◽  
Leyla Ayvarovna Gamidullaeva

Many of the findings within the data have generated more questions than answers; but in doing so, illuminated several paths of further investigation that may provide greater insights into the complexities of stabilizing troubled states. This chapter then, is a starting point on a journey to discover more effective means to deliver humanitarian and development aid to conflicted societies without doing greater harm in the process. Holland discusses the utility of flight simulators in helping commercial airline pilots experience a variety of scenarios that would be unthinkable to expose passengers to in the real world. The value of the pilot's experience in the simulator depends on how closely the simulator matches the aircraft it models. With even greater numbers of lives and resources at stake, utilizing agent-based modeling as a policy simulator would allow leaders to experiment with numerous response and intervention strategies in a very short period of time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 549
Author(s):  
Navid Mahdizadeh Gharakhanlou ◽  
Navid Hooshangi ◽  
Marco Helbich

Malaria threatens the lives of many people throughout the world. To counteract its spread, knowledge of the prevalence of malaria and the effectiveness of intervention strategies is of great importance. The aim of this study was to assess (1) the spread of malaria by means of a spatial agent-based model (ABM) and (2) the effectiveness of several interventions in controlling the spread of malaria. We focused on Sarbaz county in Iran, a malaria-endemic area where the prevalence rate is high. Our ABM, which was carried out in two steps, considers humans and mosquitoes along with their attributes and behaviors as agents, while the environment is made up of diverse environmental factors, namely air temperature, relative humidity, vegetation, altitude, distance from rivers and reservoirs, and population density, the first three of which change over time. As control interventions, we included long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS). The simulation results showed that applying LLINs and IRS in combination, rather than separately, was most efficient in reducing the number of infected humans. In addition, LLINs and IRS with moderate or high and high coverage rates, respectively, had significant effects on reducing the number of infected humans when applied separately. Our results can assist health policymakers in selecting appropriate intervention strategies in Iran to reduce malaria transmission.


2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 809-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther van Asselt ◽  
Sjoukje Osinga ◽  
Harry Bremmers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to simulate compliance behaviour of entrepreneurs in the Netherlands based on the Table of Eleven: 11 factors determining compliance (based on economic, cognitive, social and institutional factors). Design/methodology/approach – An Agent-Based Model (ABM) was developed that could incorporate both individual and group behaviour and allowed to evaluate the effect of various intervention strategies. For this purpose, a case study on the compliance of pig farmers with antibiotics legislation in the Netherlands was used. Findings – The effect of social factors (acceptance of legislation and social influence) on compliance levels was tested as well as the number of inspectors. This showed that the model can help to choose the most optimal intervention strategy depending on the input parameters. Research limitations/implications – Further expansion of the model may be necessary, e.g. including economic factors, in order to reflect real-life situations more closely. Practical implications – The model can be used by inspection services to effectively implement their control programme. Originality/value – The developed ABM is a first attempt to simulate compliance behaviour and as such contributes to the current limited knowledge on effective intervention strategies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akshay Jindal ◽  
Shrisha Rao

AbstractMany countries are implementing lockdown measures to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, putting more than a third of the world’s population under restrictions. The scale of such lockdowns is unprecedented, and while some effects of lockdowns are readily apparent, it is less clear what effects they may have on outbreaks of serious communicable diseases. We examine the impact of these lockdowns on outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases. Using an agent-based model and simulations, we find that the risk and severity of such outbreaks is much greater under lockdown conditions, with the number of infected people doubling in some cases. This increase in number of cases varies by different mosquito-borne diseases, and is significantly higher for diseases spread by day-biting mosquitoes. We analysed various intervention strategies and found that during lockdowns, decentralised strategies such as insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying are more effective than centralised strategies.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257598
Author(s):  
Willem Esterhuizen ◽  
Jean Lévine ◽  
Stefan Streif

We present a detailed set-based analysis of the well-known SIR and SEIR epidemic models subjected to hard caps on the proportion of infective individuals, and bounds on the allowable intervention strategies, such as social distancing, quarantining and vaccination. We describe the admissible and maximal robust positively invariant (MRPI) sets of these two models via the theory of barriers. We show how the sets may be used in the management of epidemics, for both perfect and imperfect/uncertain models, detailing how intervention strategies may be specified such that the hard infection cap is never breached, regardless of the basic reproduction number. The results are clarified with detailed examples.


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