Bond Uni’s modelling of disease-spread boosts the Covid-19 effort

Predicting the spread of disease is becoming more accurate as modelling improves, according to this Bond University researcher.

Software that can replicate the outbreak of any disease in any city or region, including demographic details, is being modelled on the Gold Coast in the hope of fighting against Covid-19 and future pandemics.

Bond University’s Chris Stapelberg and his team have been working on a discrete-event, simulated social agent-based network transmission (DESSABNeT) model since April last year.

“Agent-based modelling is when you create a population of agents, software ‘people’ if you like,” said Professor Stapelberg, who is joint chair in mental health for Bond and Gold Coast University Hospital.

Agents are independent, able to make decisions and can interact with each other. “This leads to a very lifelike model. We can split them up into age groups according to demographic data and give them jobs according to employment numbers on, for example, the Gold Coast.

“We can let them take public transport according to the public transport statistics of the Gold Coast, we can have them go to football matches, restaurants, and spend time at home with their families, according to statistics for how the Australian population spends its time.”

When Covid-19 is introduced, the virus spreads as it would in real life, via the social networks of the software agents.

“Where this model stands apart is its extreme flexibility,” he said. “It can model a whole range of complicated scenarios. And we can quickly repurpose it to answer different questions. You can pick one particular aspect of Covid-19 spread, for example, and you can make detailed adjustments that can give you a lot of information.”

Professor Stapelberg and his colleagues are sending their findings to health authorities to help inform the pandemic response.

“Next we are quite interested in exploring how vaccination of the population might interact with the most effective – and minimal – social restrictions to help prevent the spread of the virus.”