Platform
At a glance
Data & data sources
Primary data sources for LOKI-Pandemics include aggregated public surveillance data, case-based data from health authorities, data on clinical and hospitalization-related parameters (in collaboration with the Lean European Open Survey on SARS-CoV-2 [LEOSS] project, a prospective European multi-center cohort study), population-based studies and seroprevalence surveys (https://serohub.net/en/, https://hzi-c19-antikoerperstudie.de/).
It also integrates existing data on vaccinations, wastewater samples, contact networks, mobility, and aerosol dynamics.
In addition an evidence synthesis on existing literature will be conducted to integrate previous estimates of model parameters. Evidence synthesis will be focused on SARS-CoV-2 in the first stage and will later integrate ongoing work (https://respinow.de/) on other respiratory pathogens.
This data and the synthesized evidence on the model parameters are provided in a structured form and readily usable manner for further use in the analysis.
Data analysis and modeling
As part of the analysis of the data, models will be developed to represent the real spread of infectious diseases. Furthermore, methods for parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification and optimization are provided. Parameter estimation attempts to draw conclusions about the true values of various parameters (e.g., the number of daily contacts). Uncertainty quantification can be used to calculate how likely certain results are if certain aspects of the model are not fully known or are fuzzy or subject to variation. The optimization tool calculates for a predefined goal, the optimal combination as well as the optimal timing of non-pharmaceutical measures from a given set.
All models will be developed under a permissive open source license and published within our simulation backend MEmilio (https://github.com/DLR-SC/memilio).
Web application
The web application provides the ability to monitor, evaluate and control a local infection event. Centres of infections can be identified with the help of the application and the simulation of scenarios shows how a disease can continue to spread in the future. This allows for a better assessment of the regional and supra-regional situation.
The web application also offers the possibility of interactive simulation of different scenarios with and without the application of non-pharmaceutical measures in direct comparison. This allows the effect of individual or combined measures to be presented and evaluated. The resulting data can be used as a decision-making tool for the introduction of measures that effectively contain the incidence of infection.
Privacy
Information security aspects are an integral part of the overall platform to ensure that sensitive data is analysed while maintaining privacy. Solutions to this will be defined primarily by technical and legal considerations, which will require collaboration with legal experts and will affect the design of the platform's security architecture. Since the platform will provide various forms of access to potentially sensitive data, it is critical to develop novel security architectures that can produce the best possible data use while complying with privacy and data security.
Dealing with uncertainties of the calculations
Properties of virus spread that the calculation requires, such as incubation time or human contact behaviour, are never known exactly. We refer to these properties as input factors. With uncertainty in the input factors comes uncertainty in the output of the calculations, i.e., it can never be predicted exactly how many new infections there will be. However, with the help of uncertainty quantification, it is possible to estimate how likely the outcome will be within a certain range.
What is the benefit of LOKI-Pandemics?
The platform is being developed for health authorities to control local epidemic outbreaks. A great opportunity therefore arises in the long term from the use of the practical and user-friendly platform for outbreak control of local infection events. The program offers functions for monitoring, investigation and evaluation of local outbreaks. Well-prepared, consolidated and local data is available for this purpose. This data is elicited in the project, processed accordingly and merged. The data then forms the basis for calculations or simulations. The results of these simulations are immediately available with daily updated data and can be used to calculate optimal intervention strategies. The web application can thus be used as a decision-making tool for the introduction of measures and their justification, which also allows better planning of the deployment of resources for pandemic response.