A database on the socioeconomic and behavioral impact in Sri Lanka through multiple waves of COVID-19 (preprint)

Objectives: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was diverse and disproportionate among nations and population segments. The impacts of the disease and the containment strategies adopted are broad and cut across multiple facets of life, society, and the economy, which are intimately interlinked. To ascertain the socioeconomic impact and human behavior changes due to the pandemic and the containment strategies adopted a large household survey was conducted covering all the provinces in Sri Lanka. Data description: We conducted a cross-sectional Household survey covering all 9 provinces, including 20 districts in Sri Lanka from August 2021 to September 2021. This dataset consists of the data collected from 3020 households, on the impact of the pandemic through three distinctly identified pandemic waves in Sri Lanka. The questionnaire was designed to capture COVID-19 impact in 2 primary sections (socioeconomic impact and behavioral impact) which were further divided into 8 sub-sections: educational impact, impact on mobility, access to health services, economic impact, human interactions, food consumption, religious and cultural, and psychological impact. This dataset will enable researchers and policymakers to analyze the impact of the pandemic through a multifaceted perspective enabling a more holistic approach to decision-making.

PDSIM: An Agent-Based Framework with Human Behavior Modeling for Pandemic Impact Assessment to Build Sustainable Communities (preprint)

It is crucial to immediately curb the spread of a disease once an outbreak is identified in a pandemic. An agent based simulator will enable the policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness of different hypothetical strategies and policies with a higher level of granularity. This will allow them to identify the vulnerabilities and asses the threat level more effectively, which in turn can be used to build resilience within the community against a pandemic. This study proposes a PanDemic SIMulator (PDSIM ) which is capable of modeling complex environments while simulating realistic human motion patterns. The ability of PDSIM to track the infection propagation patterns, contact paths, places visited, characteristics of people, vaccination, and testing information of the population, allows the user to check the efficacy of different containment strategies and testing protocols. The results obtained based on the case studies of Covid-19 are used to validate the proposed model. However, it is highly extendable to all pandemics in general, enabling robust planning for more sustainable communities.