February 21, 2005
Virtual Epidemiology In Portland, Oregon
Computer Simulation Models Smallpox Outbreak
Some people worry that personalization and customization of news online will lead to the loss of a serendipity they argue exists when you cede that control to the editor of a newspaper or the news director of a television station. How, they argue, will we ever find news that turns out to be interesting or useful but that we never would have thought to find on our own?
That would be one of the reasons we read MetaFilter every day, and this evening's bit of locally-relevant and serendipitous news comes from this MetaFilter item which in turns points to this Scientific American article on "virtual epidemiology".
In essence, computer simulations of cities are observed for the interactions between and amongst people and their movement through their social networks, in an attempt to trace how disease outbreaks would spread through communities -- and the team working on this is using our very own Portland.
Although EpiSims can now be adapted to different cities, the original TRANSIMS model was based on Portland, Ore. The TRANSIMS virtual version of Portland incorporates detailed digital maps of the city, including representations of its rail lines, roads, signs, traffic signals and other transportation infrastructure, and produces information about traffic patterns and travel times. Publicly available data were used to generate 180,000 specific locations, a synthetic population of 1.6 million residents, and realistic daily activities for those people.
This article discusses the results of a simulated outbreak of smallpox in Portland. Check out the rather disturbing results from the "no response" option.
Apparently there is also a study underway of a flu pandemic as well, results from which are expected to be released sometime this coming Spring.
Comments (1)
Clackablog on 24 Feb 2005
Very, very interesting, especially in view of both the national lack of public health preparedness to meet such a threat, and Wednesday's airing of 'Dirty War'.
Of course, Heinlein wrote about dirty bombs in '41, so the ability of the human race to forget about important stuff, as opposed to the latest JailBlazers affair, is about average.