MODELING AND SIMULATION FOR THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 IN AN INDIAN CITY: A CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT

We present a case study on modeling and predicting the course of Covid-19 in the Indian city of Pune. The results presented in this paper are concerned primarily with the wave of infections triggered by the Delta variant during the period between February and June 2021. Our work demonstrates the necessity for bringing together compartmental stock-and-flow and agent-based models and the limitations of each approach when used individually. Some of the work presented here was carried out in the process of advising the local city administration and reflects the challenges associated with employing these models in a real-world environment with its uncertainties and time pressures. Our experience, described in the paper, also highlights the risks associated with forecasting the course of an epidemic with evolving variants. © 2022 IEEE.