PERISCOPE has started on November 1st, 2020 with the goal of understanding socio-economic and behavioral impacts of COVID-19
The European Commission approved PERISCOPE (PAN-EUROPEAN RESPONSE TO THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19 AND FUTURE PANDEMICS AND EPIDEMICS), a large-scale research project that brings together 32 European institutions and is coordinated by the University of Pavia. PERISCOPE is a Horizon 2020 research project that was funded with almost 10 million Euros under the Coronavirus Global Response initiative launched in May 2020 by the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The goal of PERISCOPE is to shed light onto the broad socio-economic and behavioral impacts of COVID-19. A multidisciplinary consortium will bring together experts in all aspects of the current outbreak: clinic and epidemiologic; socio-economic and political; statistical and technological. The partners of the consortium will carry out theoretical and experimental research to contribute to a deeper understanding of the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic and the measures adopted to contain it. Such research-intensive activities will allow the consortium to propose measures to prepare Europe for future pandemics and epidemics in a relatively short timeline. The main goals of PERISCOPE are: • to gather data on the broad impacts of COVID-19 in order to develop a comprehensive, user-friendly, openly accessible COVID Atlas, which should become a reference tool for researchers and policymakers, and a dynamic source of information to disseminate to the general public; • to perform innovative statistical analysis on the collected data, with the help of various methods including machine learning tools; • to identify successful practices and approaches adopted at the local level, which could be scaled up at the pan-European level for a better containment of the pandemic and its related socio-economic impacts; and • to develop guidance for policymakers at all levels of government, in order to enhance Europe’s preparedness for future similar events and proposed reforms in the multi-level governance of health. PERISCOPE started on 1 November 2020 and will last until 31 October 2023.