Interactive Outbreak Simulator: A Robust and Customizable Platform for Socio-Epidemiological Insights

Summary

Development and deployment of a robust, customizable interactive outbreak simulator platform to model disease transmission, understand intervention effects, and provide real-time insights for public health experts across the United States.

What they want

The project aims to develop a platform for modeling disease transmission during outbreaks and deploy it into research laboratories and public health settings. This involves three specific aims: Aim #1: Transform and re-architect the platform's front and back ends to standardize the data model, improve efficiency and compatibility with visualization libraries, enable modeling of all US states at various scales (statewide, metro areas, cities, by county, zip code, or census tract), and add support for simulation concurrency and checkpointing for scalability and robustness. Aim #2: Write new functions to ingest additional data sources (e.g., social vulnerability index), develop a toolkit for researchers to augment existing models with custom disease, travel, and intervention strategy models, and expand unit/functional tests and documentation. Aim #3: Leverage an existing network of epidemiological researchers and public health experts for hands-on testing, feedback gathering, platform refinement, and optimization of deployment strategies for single-user and multi-user environments to ensure reproducibility and foster a community-driven approach.

Deliverables

Re-architected front and back ends of the platform
Standardized data model
Platform capable of modeling all US states at various scales (statewide, metro areas, cities, by county, zip code, census tract)
Simulation concurrency and checkpointing support
New functions for ingesting additional data sources (e.g., social vulnerability index)
Toolkit for custom disease, travel, and intervention strategy models
Expanded unit and functional tests
Improved documentation for future contributors
Refined platform interface and functionality based on expert feedback
Optimized deployment strategies for single-user and multi-user environments

Technical requirements

Standardized data model
Compatibility with established visualization libraries
Support for modeling all US states at statewide, metro area, city, county, zip code, or census tract scales
Simulation concurrency
Checkpointing capabilities
Ingestion of social vulnerability index and other data sources
Toolkit for custom disease models
Toolkit for custom travel models
Toolkit for custom intervention strategy models
Unit and functional tests

Risks & flags

Project builds off a previous collaboration and a prototype platform, which could indicate a preference for the incumbent or prior collaborators if this were a competitive solicitation.