The New York Times credits the reports from Imperial College [1] for having a particularly influential impact on policy: The report, which warned that an uncontrolled spread of the disease …
When building models it is essential to be self-critical. The model built in the previous two steps fits the data well but is very poor for a number of reasons. …
Many systems can be usefully modelling by fitting curves to historical data. This well established scientific method can be very useful when used well. Figure 9.3(a) shows the UK deaths …
This video shows the Agent Based Model run with 50% of the agents vaccinated. Without vaccination the epidemic spreads rapidly as illustrated in Figure 6.1(a) . There is a high …
In democracies citizens want their politicians and policy makers to have vision for a better future. Policy makers are expected to foresee problems and opportunities. In this context their policies …
A model is a description of a system or process to show how it works. Physical models are used in many ways. Architects use them to enable clients to visualise …
Pandemics are large-scale widespread cascades of infectious diseases that can cause severe illness and death and require much higher level of healthcare provision than normal. A challenge for governments worldwide …
The first thing to do when modelling a real world system is to look at it and abstract the most important features. For epidemics the fundamental things is the population. …
Figure 11.1. Timeline to the UK Lockdown Politicians have the problem that, even if they believe in evidence-based policy, the evidence they receive from scientists can be inconsistent or downright …
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube. In this video Prof Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer of the National Health Service briefly summarises the British Government’s policy to save …
Resumé of Week 1 Previously we reviewed some of the vital statistics of COVID-19 and the crises in healthcare systems. The Kermac-McKendrick SIR model was presented as the basis for …
Understanding how COVID-19 is transmitted is fundamental to forecasting how the pandemic will develop and spread. The World Health organisation [1] gives the following definitions and information on the transmission …
This course is part of an international initiative to bring the best that science can offer into policy. These courses will evolve with the new science of complex systems aiming …
The Black Death took about five years to spread throughout Europe from China. It has taken the Covid-19 epidemic about five months to do the same. This course concerns the …