Periodic Reporting for period 3 - HERoS (Health Emergency Response in Interconnected Systems)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-04-01 do 2023-05-31
HERoS' overall objective is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. HERoS provides policies and guidelines for improved crisis governance, focusing on responders to public health emergencies, and their needs to make informed decisions.
HERoS' objectives are to
- extract, understand and model different co-ordination structures and governance arrangements, determine bottlenecks and develop policies and procedures for efficient information-sharing,
- improve the predictions of the spread by understanding and modelling the impact of local behaviour on the spread of the disease and provide policy advice that considers deep uncertainty,
- improve the management of medical supply chains,
- reduce the impacts of cascading effects across globalised supply chains,
- develop a new method to retrieve actionable information from social media and detect rumours and misinformation early, and to
- develop training modules for epidemics response and disseminate project results to build up a network of early adopters.
HERoS consists of three phases:
1. "Rapid Response" (M1-M6) focuses on crucial aspects of pandemic response. It includes an analysis of governance arrangements in the ongoing COVID-19 response in situ, local behavioural epi-spread models, a gap analysis to secure medical supplies, and COVID-19 misinformation spread analysis.
2. "Evaluation, research & innovation" (M7-30) focuses on lessons learned, changing workflows and methods, fine-tuned behavioural epidemiological models, secure deliveries, and explainability methods on COVID-19 misinformation.
3. "Training and dissemination" combines lessons learned across different aspects of the project, and develops training modules.
This is third and final periodic report of the project, which finishes the "Evaluation, research and innovation" phase as well as the "Training and dissemination" phase.
HERoS' objectives are to
- extract, understand and model different co-ordination structures and governance arrangements, determine bottlenecks and develop policies and procedures for efficient information-sharing,
- improve the predictions of the spread by understanding and modelling the impact of local behaviour on the spread of the disease and provide policy advice that considers deep uncertainty,
- improve the management of medical supply chains,
- reduce the impacts of cascading effects across globalised supply chains,
- develop a new method to retrieve actionable information from social media and detect rumours and misinformation early, and to
- develop training modules for epidemics response and disseminate project results to build up a network of early adopters.
HERoS consists of three phases:
1. "Rapid Response" (M1-M6) focuses on crucial aspects of pandemic response. It includes an analysis of governance arrangements in the ongoing COVID-19 response in situ, local behavioural epi-spread models, a gap analysis to secure medical supplies, and COVID-19 misinformation spread analysis.
2. "Evaluation, research & innovation" (M7-30) focuses on lessons learned, changing workflows and methods, fine-tuned behavioural epidemiological models, secure deliveries, and explainability methods on COVID-19 misinformation.
3. "Training and dissemination" combines lessons learned across different aspects of the project, and develops training modules.
This is third and final periodic report of the project, which finishes the "Evaluation, research and innovation" phase as well as the "Training and dissemination" phase.
During the first year of the project, HERoS has completed the Rapid Response phase including all its foreseen deliverables and workshops, and has moved on to the "Evaluation, research & innovation" phase. This phase was ongoing through all of the second and the first part of the third year of the project. With this phase, WPs1-3 were finalised in that
- WP1 ("Governance") finalised task 1.2 that comprised governance best practices and lessons learned across different cases and situations, including from school closures and lockdowns affecting elderly care in various countries, PCPM's deployment of emergency medical teams, the EU joint procurement and the COVAX initiatives for the purchase and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and the social network Municipio Solidale. Also, deliverable 1.3 from task 1.3 was updated with PCPM's data for emergency medical teams. Various cases were presented at HNPW 2022 resp. 2023.
- WP2 ("Behavioural models in epidemics") has been finalised with the combination of results from prior tasks, in the development of coupled models and the analysis of various scenarios in task 2.3. Initial results were presented at HNPW in May 2022, both in terms of further modelling, and a study on elderly care during COVID-19.
- WP3 ("Supply chain management") finalised task 3.3 and with that the demonstration of long-range flights of unmanned aerial vehicles to quarantine zones. This task builds on the workflows that had previously been developed in task 3.2. First simulation results were already presented at HNPW 2022.
WP4 ("Social media analytics") continued with the work on T4.3 on misinformation countering with efficient explainability methods until the end of the project. Results were also presented at HNPW 2023.
The final, "Training and dissemination" phase saw the results from WPs1-4 being combined in various training packages. Particularly important to this last reporting period are tasks 5.5 that developed face to face training packages as well as a MOOC, and task 5.6 that brought all WPs together for a final conference and joint dissemination. The final conference also engaged sister projects of HERoS.
- WP1 ("Governance") finalised task 1.2 that comprised governance best practices and lessons learned across different cases and situations, including from school closures and lockdowns affecting elderly care in various countries, PCPM's deployment of emergency medical teams, the EU joint procurement and the COVAX initiatives for the purchase and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and the social network Municipio Solidale. Also, deliverable 1.3 from task 1.3 was updated with PCPM's data for emergency medical teams. Various cases were presented at HNPW 2022 resp. 2023.
- WP2 ("Behavioural models in epidemics") has been finalised with the combination of results from prior tasks, in the development of coupled models and the analysis of various scenarios in task 2.3. Initial results were presented at HNPW in May 2022, both in terms of further modelling, and a study on elderly care during COVID-19.
- WP3 ("Supply chain management") finalised task 3.3 and with that the demonstration of long-range flights of unmanned aerial vehicles to quarantine zones. This task builds on the workflows that had previously been developed in task 3.2. First simulation results were already presented at HNPW 2022.
WP4 ("Social media analytics") continued with the work on T4.3 on misinformation countering with efficient explainability methods until the end of the project. Results were also presented at HNPW 2023.
The final, "Training and dissemination" phase saw the results from WPs1-4 being combined in various training packages. Particularly important to this last reporting period are tasks 5.5 that developed face to face training packages as well as a MOOC, and task 5.6 that brought all WPs together for a final conference and joint dissemination. The final conference also engaged sister projects of HERoS.
The Rapid Response phase of the HERoS project was designed to maximise impact through its end users. A joint webinar was organised to summarise all results and policy recommendations from the Rapid Response phase, and has impacted on the EU’s decision to look at ICU capacities across EU borders.
HERoS will generate a multi-layered governance framework for the analysis of governance mechanisms, decision-making processes and sensemaking processes, to ensure the development of robust policies for combatting epidemic outbreaks. An agent-based model is developed to consider the impact of local population structures and behaviour on epi-spread. This is coupled with a network model based on system dynamics, to assess the spread across globalised networks. HERoS analyses medical supply chains for supporting pandemic response by improving the security of supply of critical items. HERoS also develops of tools to track Covid-19 misinformation content and spread on social media using legitimate assessments from fact-checkers.
All training modules have been compiled and deployed already. The face to face training to end users was so well received that it was run also a second time. The final massive online open course has been facilitated in the spring of 2023 and continues to be available beyond the finalisation of the project.
HERoS will generate a multi-layered governance framework for the analysis of governance mechanisms, decision-making processes and sensemaking processes, to ensure the development of robust policies for combatting epidemic outbreaks. An agent-based model is developed to consider the impact of local population structures and behaviour on epi-spread. This is coupled with a network model based on system dynamics, to assess the spread across globalised networks. HERoS analyses medical supply chains for supporting pandemic response by improving the security of supply of critical items. HERoS also develops of tools to track Covid-19 misinformation content and spread on social media using legitimate assessments from fact-checkers.
All training modules have been compiled and deployed already. The face to face training to end users was so well received that it was run also a second time. The final massive online open course has been facilitated in the spring of 2023 and continues to be available beyond the finalisation of the project.