Agent-Based Social Simulation for Policy Making

In agent-based social simulations (ABSS), an artificial population of intelligent agents that imitate human behavior is used to investigate complex phenomena within social systems. This is particularly useful for decision makers, where ABSS can provide a sandpit for investigating the effects of policies prior to their implementation. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, sophisticated models of human behavior enable the investigation of the effects different interventions can have and even allow for analyzing why a certain situation occurred or why a specific behavior can be observed. In contrast to other applications of simulation, the use for policy making significantly alters the process of model building and assessment, and requires the modelers to follow different paradigms. In this chapter, we report on a tutorial that was organized as part of the ACAI 2021 summer school on AI in Berlin, with the goal of introducing agent-based social simulation as a method for facilitating policy making. The tutorial pursued six Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs), which are accomplished by three sessions, each of which consists of both a conceptual and a practical part. We observed that the PhD students participating in this tutorial came from a variety of different disciplines, where ABSS is mostly applied as a research method. Thus, they do often not have the possibility to discuss their approaches with ABSS experts. Tutorials like this one provide them with a valuable platform to discuss their approaches, to get feedback on their models and architectures, and to get impulses for further research. © 2023, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Origin, Transmission and Spread of COVID-19: Lessons for Future

At the end of 2019, a novel Corona virus was identified as the cause of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, a city in the Hubei Province of China, which has been declared pandemic globally. As a result of which most parts of the worlds were under complete lockdown in order to curb this contagious disease. The pandemic COVID-19 which started from the Wuhan province of China has now spread globally effecting about 6 million people. The world has faced such a pandemic after Spanish Flu of 1918 which affected about 500 million people worldwide. This pandemic has had huge impacts in terms of health, economic, social, cultural life of nearly every individual. Vulnerable groups mainly migrant workers, marginalized women;children have faced magnanimous crises due to this pandemic which is still rising, physically as well as mentally. Considering the data as on 1st of July 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that covid-19 has infected 9,277,214 people and claimed 478,691 lives globally;nearly 216 countries have been affected so far by this deadly virus. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, COVID-19 has 186,514 active cases and has claimed 14,894 lives (July 1, 2020). To curb the spread of virus, the government of India announced lockdown on country wide basic for a period of 21 days which was further extended to May 31st 20. Objective: In order to gear toward of the spread of this pandemic, we must explore its virology, zoonotics, and epidemiology to develop an understanding of the transmission of the disease. The structure of the receptor-binding gene region is very similar to that of the SARS corona virus, and the virus has been shown to use the same receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), for cell entry. The International Committee on taxonomy of viruses has proposed that this virus be designated as severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It comes from the same family of virus i.e. corona viruse that caused SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) pandemic in 2002 and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012 and effected a large number of people but not at the level which this SARS-CoV-2 has affected. Full-genome sequencing and phylogenic analysis indicated that the virus causing COVID-19 is a betacoronavirus in the same subgenus as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus (as well as several bat corona viruses), but in a different clade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), delineated incubation period of COVID-19 as approximately 5.1 days (range 2-14 days) and thus, quarantine period for COVID-19 is set by WHO at 14 days. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemics in association with economic catastrophes are posing huge challenges, raising many challenges including wrenching trade-offs. Crises are global, but their impacts are deeply local affecting every individual. The policy response to this plight needs to be rapid, even if it is rough around the edges. All it requires is universal solidarity, coordination and cooperation among nations all across globe. © 2023 DMICS.

Responding to information asymmetry in crisis situations: innovation in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

Crises test the resilience of public service organizations. Healthcare providers must respond and innovate within tight constraints to address challenges. Presenting COVID-19 as a knowable unknown (black swan event), we adopt information processing theory to investigate how healthcare providers and their suppliers address information asymmetry to support decision-making. Building on primary and secondary datasets, we demonstrate managers were innovating internal structural responses. For black swan events, in-house ‘intelligent clients' are intrinsic not only in managing information uncertainty associated with early stages of the crisis, but also in addressing information equivocality and joint decision-making with other organizations associated with implementing solutions. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

River Heavy Transport in Emergency Conditions

The active use of freight transport in the process of flow management in terms of adapting the supply of goods during the spread of the pandemic COVID - 19 - in peacetime and the supply of military equipment, humanitarian goods during the war. High adaptability of river freight transport to changes in key security environment conditions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the context of hostilities in Ukraine - reformatting of logistics activities to maintain security and ensure the delivery of goods, as well as changing the role of certain modes of transport in conditions of hostilities. In the context of hostilities, the transport freight system is proposed to be considered as a consolidated flexible logistics system with support nodes in the basic elements of land and water infrastructure, which, given the comparison of potential nodes and multiplier effect has increased resistance to aggression in war. The specifics of river freight transport in the system of the unified logistics system of the country in meeting the needs of civil. © 2022 Kaunas University of Technology. All rights reserved.

Sensemaking and corporate social responsibility: Implications for stakeholder communication amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: The aim of this research study was to establish via a linguistic analysis of stakeholder communication texts, how organisational sensemaking in a crisis situation, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, might influence the social responsibility orientation of companies. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from public social responsibility statements of 10 financial services companies before and immediately after the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) method. In this way, qualitative information could be turned into statistical data and made comparable across the sample. Results: The results confirm that the social responsibility sensemaking processes in companies manifest in their public stakeholder communications. While the analysed statements indicate an increase in affiliation with the predicament of stakeholders, it also reveals reduced levels of transparency. This tension between affiliation and transparency holds consequences for authenticity and reputation in corporate social responsibility (CSR) sensemaking and orientation. Practical implications: Corporate decision-makers and communication experts should take special care of the relationship between CSR sensemaking and stakeholder communication as interconnected processes in a purposeful and mindful manner. Originality/value: The research study demonstrates how the analysis of textual statements can be used as a lens into CSR sensemaking in the context of disruption and adversity. This establishes a method for measurement of CSR orientation that can assess an organisation's current orientation, as well as shifts in orientation because of crisis situations. Organisations can use this information to evaluate their CSR communications so that they are more aligned with intentions.

FM Radio's Response to a Dual Crisis Situation in the Republic of Croatia: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the 2020 Zagreb Earthquake

The paper examines the programming and organisational responses of FM radio to a dual crisis situation in the Republic of Croatia. At the very beginning of the national COVID-19 lockdown, on 22 March 2020, the capital city of Zagreb was struck by the strongest earthquake in the last 140 years. With the purpose of 'recording' the situation at the time when the disaster was actually occurring, the research aims to question how the radio stations in the area acted under such unprecedented crisis circumstances. Methodologically, it is a qualitative and descriptive research based on the analysis of questionnaire answers. Open-ended questions are grouped into three main topics: organization and programme changes, sources of information and the role of digital platforms. The results reveal that radio stations tended to retain their formatted programme content regardless of the dual crisis. This finding indicates the necessity to re-examine the overall role of FM radio in a modern democratic society.

Leadership role of the Human Resources department in crisis situations: the case of COVID-19 pandemic

The paper points out the leading role of the HR department in crisis situations, with special emphasis on the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the whole world in early 2020. Regardless of the intensity and form in which they occur, crises threaten the functioning and survival of organizations. The HR department is an important factor in the successful functioning of organizations and, in a period of crisis, this department takes a leading role in the process of crisis management and subsequent recovery. During COVID-19 pandemic, the HR department of every organization had to confront new challenges in order to protect the health of employees, while ensuring the normal functioning of organizations. In order to find out how this department dealt with crisis that occurred, empirical research with a specially designed questionnaire was conducted and filled in by 108 respondents from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia in 2020. The research results showed that HR department has taken a leading role in preserving the health and safety of employees, as well as in the process of adapting organizations to function in crisis conditions. According to results, the key activities carried out by the HR department in organizations are work from home (wherever the nature of the work allowed), flexible working hours, reorganization of the working space to achieve the required physical distance between employees, improved hygiene measures, etc. In addition, the research results showed that, during the global COVID-19 pandemic, the HR departments took an active role in providing psychological assistance to employees to adapt to new conditions and ways of working.

Strengthening of work-life balance while working remotely in the context of COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Recently, quite a number of employees have been asked to choose remote work or even have been forced into it as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the benefits suggested by remote working, e.g. saving on commuting time and expenses working from home generates numerous challenges for employees, including the blurred line between the roles of working and private life. While, previous studies have demonstrated that work-life balance, which refers to the ability of every individual to coordinate work and family obligations successfully, has a significant impact on employee well-being and organisational performance, ways for maintaining the balance under crisis remain underexplored. OBJECTIVE: Trying to narrow the gap, the paper aims at revealing the antecedents of work-life balance while working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A quantitative survey has been conducted in Lithuania (pilot study). The data have been collected from the employees working only remotely. RESULTS: The results provided evidence that employees struggled with work-home balance while working remotely. In line with the results, work and family demands served as detrimental factors for work-home balance, while manager support, co-workers support, job autonomy, and job control increased work-home balance. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, the research results expand the knowledge on the antecedents of work-life balance in a crisis situation. Moreover, the findings have significant implications for employers demonstrating that organisations need to carefully plan and implement new strategies and practices for work-home balance improvement for the employees who work from home.

[Corona pandemic in the practice : A flashback and reflection from the rheumatological practice]. / Corona-Pandemie in der Praxis : Eine Rückblende und Reflexion aus der rheumatologischen Praxis.

The corona pandemic changed the lives of people in Germany in 2020. Completely new challenges had to be met in outpatient care and of course also in rheumatology practices. The rapid development, the constant changes, the readjustment, the accompaniment of patients and staff team in this global catastrophe are described. The influence on the daily work and the implementation of new scientific knowledge, e.g. the recommendations of the German Society of Rheumatology (DGRh), are reported. Experiences and insights into what can be learned and taken away from crisis situations are outlined. A detailed chronology of the events, taking the special rheumatological features into account, completes this report of experiences.

Psychological Crisis Intervention for COVID-19 Lockdown Stress in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: Survey Study and Qualitative Analysis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the worldviews of most people. Social isolation after the COVID-19 lockdown has not only led to economic difficulties but also resulted in adverse psychological reactions. As in most countries, including Poland, this situation has been very challenging for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). In Poland, a crisis intervention team for patients with T1DM was established. The goal of the team was to provide psychological support for these patients, if needed, and to present information concerning how these patients may obtain medical consultations and prescriptions. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to analyze the psychological parameters and main emotional reactions of patients with T1DM during the COVID-19 lockdown. METHODS: An email with information concerning the possibility of having a web-based consultation with psychologists and psychiatrists and an attached set of psychological tests was sent to all patients with T1DM who were under the care of an outpatient diabetes clinic. The consultations were performed by licensed clinical psychologists and psychologists. This study was approved by the Bioethics Committee of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. RESULTS: The patients who decided to use psychological support had statistically higher levels of anxiety (state P=.043; trait P=.022), stress (P=.001) than those of patients from the group who did not seek support. CONCLUSIONS: The presented intervention team may be perceived as an example of important and successful cooperation and communication between specialists of different fields of medicine (diabetology, psychiatry, and psychology) in a crisis situation.

Inter- und intraprofessionelle Zusammenarbeit in Krisensituationen auf der Intensivstation am Beispiel von COVID-19.

Interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration in crises situations in the intensive care unit regarding COVID-19 - a qualitative, retrospective analysis Abstract. Background: Interprofessional collaboration is elementary in the intensive care unit, a success factor in difficult patient situations and complex therapies. The COVID-19-pandemic challenged newly composed treatment teams, however, experience does not exist. Aim: We analyzed personal experiences and views on inter- and intraprofessional collaboration in intensive care units during the COVID-19-pandemic and identified influencing factors. Methods: We used a qualitative, retrospective study design, collected data from physicians, nurses in intensive care, anesthesia and surgery and physiotherapists during group discussions using the story / dialogue method. We analyzed the data according to Mayring's Qualitative content analysis. Results: We identified two main categories, each with three sub-categories: 1. Mastering a exceptional situation actively (Recognizing a common goal; Acting in solidarity; Getting to know each other in inter- / intraprofessional collaboration), 2. Having overcome the exceptional situation in retrospect (Maintaining personal contacts; Gaining new knowledge and perspectives; Taking what has been learned into the future). The participants rated the interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration as good to very good. Conclusions: Factors promoting collaboration and positive experiences are to be incorporated into everyday work. The intraprofessional management team thereby defines common goals and values for the best possible patient care.

Assessment of military preparedness for naturogenic threat: the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic.

This article deals with the provision of cooperation of the Army of the Czech Republic with other units of rescue teams in the implementation of rescue and liquidation work in the regions of the Czech Republic in non-military crisis situations. At the present time of the global pandemic of covid-19 and the associated mass deployment of forces and resources of the primary and secondary units of the rescue system, the required effective cooperation in practice has proved necessary. The paper deals with the analysis of emergency management in a state of emergency in order to contribute to the improvement of civil-military cooperation. Based on the results of the research survey, the authors proposed evaluation criteria for determining the level of emergency preparedness of the forces and resources of the Army of the Czech Republic.

Logistics Flow Optimization for Advanced Management of the Crisis Situation.

Our work has been carried out with the aim of providing a solution to decision-making problems encountered in information systems for supply chains in crisis situation. The supply chain represents a competitive advantage that companies seek to perpetuate. It aims to optimize the exchanges, or flows, that the company maintains with its suppliers and its customers. These flows can be of various natures. It can be information flows relating to supplies or product design, financial flows linked to purchases, or even flows of goods. The crisis management logistics is getting more and more attention, especially in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic. For these systems, where it is never very easy to anticipate the evolution of the environment, the forms of changes undergone are varied and rapid. We aim to provide an answer to these challenges, in an approach that links optimization methods to the paradigm of artificial intelligence. We therefore propose to find mathematical models, and inter-agent cooperation protocols, to minimize the risk of stock shortage in any area of ​​the supply chain.