A Decision Making Aid for Organizations during Epidemic Situations

ABSTRACT

An epidemic is a widespread infection within a population at a particular period. COVID-19 is one such epidemic which is turned into a pandemic by mid-2020. COVID-19 had an enormous impact on people's livelihood, health, economy, and social life. In Sri Lanka, we have faced the dreadful side of the COVID-19 during its second, third, and fourth waves. Some of these waves were propagated by the behavior of individuals in organizations. During this period several intervention strategies have been introduced in order to stop the disease spread globally and as well as locally using. Many different epidemic models built using techniques ranging from statistical prediction to simulation. For this research we used Agent-Based modeling to simulate the spread of a contagious disease in different organizations. Several parameters have been introduced in the development process of these models considering some important aspects of contagious disease spreads. Two common interventions practiced in countries were implemented to evaluate their effectiveness, namely social distancing and face mask. Agent-based simulation models were generated from these computational models and evaluated using parameter sweeping. The effectiveness of the two interventions in mitigation of the spread of the disease were compared. Flattening the curves of the graphs of infection spread can be achieved by timing the interventions early. The simulation clearly shows the impact of parameters these and their importance in the control of disease spreads. © 2021 IEEE.