By Imran Mahmood
A Summary of: Mahmood et al. (2020)
In this paper we reviewed the lessons learned during the development of the ‘Flu and Coronavirus Simulator’ (FACS) and compare our chosen Agent-based Simulation approach with the conventional disease modelling approaches.
FACS provides an open-ended platform for the specification and implementation of the primary components of Agent-Based Simulation (ABS): (i) Agents; (ii) Virtual environment and (iii) Rule-set using a systematic Simulation Development Approach. FACS inherits features of a comprehensive simulation framework from its ancestors: (i) FLEE (Groen & Arabnejad, 2015) and (ii) FabSim3 (Groen & Arabnejad 2014). Where, FLEE mainly specializes in ABS complex dynamics e.g., agent movements; FabSim3 provides the ability to simulate a large population of agents with microscopic details using remote supercomputers. The combination of this legacy code offers numerous benefits including high performance, high scalability, and greater re-usability through a model coupling. Hence it provides an open-ended API for modellers and programmers to use it for further scientific research and development. FACS generalizes the process of disease modelling and provides a template to model any infectious disease. Thus allowing: (i) non-programmers (e.g., epidemiologists and healthcare data scientists) to use the framework as a disease modelling suite; and (ii) providing an open-ended API for modellers and programmers to use it for further scientific research and development. FACS offers a built-in location graph construction tool that allows the import of large spatial data-sets (e.g., Open Street Map), automated parsing and pre-processing of the spatial data, and generating buildings of various types, thus allowing ease in the synthesis of the virtual environment for the region under consideration. FACS provides a realistic disease transmission algorithm with the ability to capture population interactions and demographic patterns e.g., age diversity, daily life activities, mobility patterns, exposure at the street-level or in public transportation, use, or no use of face mask, assumptions of exposure within closed quarters.
We believe our approach has proven to be quite productive in modelling complex systems like epidemic spread in large regions due to ever-changing model requirements, multi-resolution abstraction, non-linear system dynamics, rule-based heuristics, and above all large-scale computing requirements. During the development of this framework, we learned that the real-world abstraction changes more rapidly than in other circumstances. For instance, the concept of social distancing and lockdown scenarios have evolved significantly since early March. Therefore, rapid changes in the ABS model were necessary. Model building in these cases benefits more from using a bottom-up approach like ABS, as opposed to any centralized analytical solution.
References
Groen, D., & Arabnejad, H. (2014). Fabsim3. GitHub. https://github.com/djgroen/FabSim3
Groen, D., & Arabnejad, H. (2015). Flee. GitHub. https:// github.com/djgroen/flee
Mahmood, I., Arabnejad, H., Suleimenova, D., Sassoon, I., Marshan, A., Serrano-Rico, A., Louvieris, P., Anagnostou, A., Taylor, S.J.E., Bell, D. & Groen, D. (2020) FACS: a geospatial agent-based simulator for analysing COVID-19 spread and public health measures on local regions, Journal of Simulation, DOI: 10.1080/17477778.2020.1800422
Mahmood, I. (2020) Flu and Coronavirus Simulator - A geospatial agent-based simulator for analyzing COVID-19 spread and public health measures on local regions. Review of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 10th Sept 2020. https://rofasss.org/2020/09/10/facs/
© The authors under the Creative Commons’ Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) Licence (v4.0)
Review of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 