A method to plan measures against epidemic spread coupling epidemic simulation model with inverse analysis

Abstract

To prevent epidemic spread in organizations, it is important to control contact opportunities. Since the epidemic situation changes day by day, the fixed suppression of contact opportunities may become an excessive measure and lead to business opportunity losses. If organizations can plan contact opportunities on timeline, they will take necessary measures against epidemic spread while preventing the opportunity losses. Therefore, we propose a method to plan contact opportunities on timeline to prevent epidemic spread according to the characteristics of individual organizations. In our proposing method, a timeline of contact intensities that enables organizations to achieve the number of acceptable infected people is explored coupling an agent-based epidemic model with an inverse analysis. Simulation experiment reveals that it is possible to obtain an optimized timeline of contact intensities every certain periods. The proposing method will be useful for organizations to plan epidemiological measures like social distance based on several periods.