ABSTRACT
The Vida Decision Support System (Vida) is an application of the Environment-Vulnerability-Decision-Technology (EVDT) integrated modeling framework specifically aimed at COVID-19 impact and response analysis. The development of Vida has been an international collaboration involving multidisciplinary teams of academics, government officials (including public health, economics, environmental, and demographic data collection officials), and others from six states: Angola, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States. These collaborators have been involved with the identification of decision support needs, the surfacing and creation of relevant data products, and the evaluation of prototypes, with the vision of creating an openly available online platform that integrates earth observation instruments (Landsat, VIIRs, Planet Lab's PlanetScope, NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, etc.) with in-situ data sources (COVID-19 case data, local demographic data, policy histories, mobile device-based mobility indices, etc.). Vida both visualizes historical data of relevance to decision-makers and simulates possible future scenarios. The modeling techniques used include system dynamics for public health, EO-based change detection and machine learning for environmental analysis, and discrete-event simulation of policy changes and impacts. In addition to the direct object of this collaboration (the development of Vida), collaborators have also benefited from sharing individual COVID-19-related insights with the network and from considering COVID-19 response in a more integrated fashion. This work outlines the Vida Decision Support System concept and the EVDT framework on which it is based. The international team is using Vida to evaluate the outcomes in several large cities regarding COVID cases, environmental changes, economic changes and policy decisions. It provides an overview of the overlapping and diverging needs and data sources of each of the collaborating teams, as well as how each of those teams have contributed to the development of Vida. The current state of the Vida prototypes and plans for future development will be presented. Additionally, this work will discuss the lessons learned from this development process and their relevance to other integrated applications. Copyright © 2021 by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
With the increasing availability of Earth Observation (EO) data has come a commensurate rise in EO applications. To address the dual needs of processing data for applications and designing missions with applications in mind, we present a multi-disciplinary, integrated modeling framework to advance environmental management, policymaking, and observation platform design. This core modeling framework is called Environment-Vulnerability-Decision-Technology (EVDT). EVDT is not the model itself, it is the framework that guides the creation of an integrated model customized to each application with a specific set of stakeholders in mind and designed using Systems Architecture. The EVDT framework can be customized to build integrated models specific to a certain application. Individual models in the framework include certain core models (Environment, Vulnerability, Decision, Technology) and optional models such as Public Health which are added when needed for a specific application. The Environment Model uses earth science methods to estimate the state of environmental phenomena;The Vulnerability Model captures societal impact of environmental changes including ecosystem services;the Decision Model captures human behavior and policy consequences;and the Technology Model provides tools to design earth observation systems or select among earth observation technologies such as satellites, airborne sensors, and in-situ sensors. The intent in developing this framework and its applications is to lead to the development of a standard to facilitate the re-use of models and the design of future remote observation systems. The presented prototype specifically focuses on two case studies. The first case study considers the dynamics of human and environmental behavior related to the mangrove forests in the Guarat-iba area of Rio de Janeiro. The second case study considers the relevancy of this framework in approaching coronavirus-related public health decisions in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, and elsewhere. © 2020 The MITRE Corporation. All Rights Reserved.