ABSTRACT
Predicting the evolution of Covid19 pandemic has been a challenge as it is significantly influenced by the characteristics of people, places and localities, dominant virus strains, extent of vaccination, and adherence to pandemic control interventions. Traditional SEIR based analyses help to arrive at a coarse-grained 'lumped up' understanding of pandemic evolution which is found wanting to determine locality-specific measures of controlling the pandemic. We comprehend the problem space from system theory perspective to develop a fine-grained simulatable city digital-twin for 'in-silico' experimentations to systematically explore - Which indicators influence infection spread to what extent? Which intervention to introduce, and when, to control the pandemic with some a-priori assurance? How best to return to a new normal without compromising individual health safety? This paper presents a digital twin centric simulation-based approach, illustrates it in a real-world context of an Indian City, and summarizes the learning and insights based on this experience. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Understanding the role of architectural design in identifying the risk of disease transmission is essential for creating resilience in buildings. Here we used a Grasshopper simulation workflow to execute aerosol disease transmission risk estimation coupled with EnergyPlus simulation inputs to assess the impact of architectural factors on the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We simulated the risk for a simple geometry with different window configurations and geographic locations. We observed that increasing the fractional opening of a single window as well as cross ventilation design can increase the outdoor air exchange, which corresponds to substantially reduced risk of disease transmission. Furthermore, indoor relative humidity in cold climates can be significantly lower in winter due to the impacts of increased mechanical heating which translates to an increased risk of infection. We demonstrate that early architectural design decisions implicate the resultant risk of disease transmission indoors that should be prioritized in the future. © 2022 Society for Modeling & Simulation International (SCS)
ABSTRACT
Understanding the role of architectural design in identifying the risk of disease transmission is essential for creating resilience in buildings. Here we used a Grasshopper simulation workflow to execute aerosol disease transmission risk estimation coupled with EnergyPlus simulation inputs to assess the impact of architectural factors on the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We simulated the risk for a simple geometry with different window configurations and geographic locations. We observed that increasing the fractional opening of a single window as well as cross ventilation design can increase the outdoor air exchange, which corresponds to substantially reduced risk of disease transmission. Furthermore, indoor relative humidity in cold climates can be significantly lower in winter due to the impacts of increased mechanical heating which translates to an increased risk of infection. We demonstrate that early architectural design decisions implicate the resultant risk of disease transmission indoors that should be prioritized in the future. © 2022 SCS.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 outbreak, which has been recognized as a pandemic in March 2020, has brought the need to timely face an extraordinary demand of health-related resources and medical assistance. The objective of this work is to analyze the structural and procedural changes that have been enacted in an emergency department (ED), according to guidelines provided by national authorities. Specifically, guidelines deal with how to manage the access of COVID-19 patients, ensure the isolation of suspected cases, execute a proper triage, and identify the appropriate treatment path for all patients. The paper describes a process modeling and simulation-based approach to analyze the treatment of patients accessing the ED of an Italian hospital. The approach makes use of the Business Process Model and Notation standard to specify ED treatment processes before and during the pandemic, so to evaluate different scenarios and effectively support process improvement activities by use of simulation-based what-if analysis. © 2021 IEEE.