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Pan-European Response to the ImpactS of COVID-19 and future Pandemics and Epidemics

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PERISCOPE (Pan-European Response to the ImpactS of COVID-19 and future Pandemics and Epidemics)

Période du rapport: 2021-11-01 au 2022-10-31

Significant knowledge gaps on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic persist, especially in terms of the socio-economic and behavioural impacts of the pandemic, and the costs and benefits of alternative government policies. While natural scientists managed to develop new research and shed light on the biological dynamic of the pandemic, socio-economic scientists have been increasingly faced with the need to provide rapid support to urgent policy decisions, with a substantial lack of data and statistical models.
Against this background, the PERISCOPE project aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the socio-economic and behavioural impacts of the pandemic, leading to new scientific evidence, collected in an integrated data atlas, from which statistical models of the impacts and their risk of future occurrence can be built, and alternative policy scenarios be compared. Besides learning the impacts and risks of the pandemic, the project aims at proposing an overarching policy response strategy, composed of innovative policies, policy guidance, and a plan for multi-level governance of the pandemic, and at deploying technological tools and training modules to test, validate and disseminate such proposals.
During the first year, the consortium has produced 21 deliverables:
On the "impacts" side, D1.1 establishes the foundational aspects concerned with the mapping of the impact assessments. A similar mapping is performed for mental health impacts (D2.1) and health inequalities (D2.2).
On the "data" side, D4.1 specifies the data sources, models, and specifications that lead to the first release of the DATA ATLAS (D4.4). In terms of statistical models, a new class of forecast methods, based on dynamic SIR models, is proposed in D6.1.
On the "policies" side, the project has specified an impact assessment methodology for best practices (D7.1) a policy governance proposal (D7.2) and a policy brief (D8.3). In addition, the first results of the project have been disseminated in dedicated workshops with policymakers (D8.1) and health authorities (D8.2). On the "operational” side, D13.1 and D14.1 set out the consortium strategy for project management and dissemination, and D13.2 the socio-sustainability strategy, whereas D12.1 and D12.2 specify the data management and ethics plan, along with the specification of five ethics requirements: D15,1, D15.2 D15.3 D15.4 D15.5.
During the first year, the consortium published 15 papers in qualified scientific journals:
WP1: 1, in "Intereconomics"
WP2: 2, in "Scandinavian Journal of Public Health" and in "International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health".
WP3: 4, one in "E-clinical medicine; one in "The Lancet", and two in "The Lancet -Regional Health Europe"
WP5: 5, in "Nature Communications" "Journal of the Royal Society Interface", PLOS one", "EPJ data science", "Big Data and Society"
WP6: 3, two in "Statistics in Medicine" and one in "BMC Public Health"


During the second year, the consortium produced 20 deliverables:
On the "impacts" side, D1.2 presents an integrated report on the socio-economic impacts of the pandemics, and D3.1 presents a similar report on the impacts on health systems. The behavioural impacts are reported in terms of: perception of covid-19 risks (D5.1) policy measures (D5.2) and (mis)information foraging (D5.3).
On the "data" side, D4.5 presents version 2.0 of the DATA ATLAS, to which software components (D4.2) and visualisation components (D4.3) have been added. On the statistical modelling side, D6.2 extends dynamic SIR models into spatial temporal models to predict the impacts of policy measures.
On the "policies" side, D7.3 describes the structure of the innovation challenge workshop, and D7.4 presents its results. Whereas D8.4 introduces the specification of PERSEUS-COVE, a decision-making platform for policymakers, and D8.5 provides guidance on
TRUSTWORTHY AI applications in health care. On a more holistic level, D9.1 proposes multi-level governance of the pandemic, for which the role of the EU is described in D9.2.
On the "technologies" side, D10.1 introduces COCTEAU, a gamification tool to increase citizens' engagement and policy inclusion; and D10.2 introduces S-PEEK, a fintech inclusion platform based on trustworthy credit ratings. Concerning training and validation, D11.1 specifies the training modules and D11.2 details their implementation as Massive Online Open Courses.
On the "operational" side, D15.6 specifies further ethics requirements.
During the second year, the consortium has published 39 papers in qualified scientific journals, distributed as follows:
WP1: 3, in "Economics of disasters and of climate change", "Royal Society Open Science", "Scientific Reports"
WP2: 3, in "Journal of Psychiatric Research", "British Journal of Psychiatry Open", "Psychiatric Quarterly".
WP3: 3, in "Epidemics"; "Nature Communication", "BMJ Journal."
WP5: 4, in "e-life", "Vaccines", "Science Advances", "PLOS One".
WP4: 7, in "Nature Medicine", International Journal of Environmental Research and public health", "Plos One", "Scientific Data", "BMJ health care and Informatics", and two in "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine".
WP&: 7, in "Biometrical Journal", "Scientific Reports", "International Review of financial analysis" and three in "Physica A - Statistical mechanics".
WP7: 1, in "Digital Policy, regulation, and governance"
WP8: 2, in "IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society" and in "PLOS digital health"
WP9: 2, in "Journal of Peace Research" and in "Social Science and Medicine"
WP10: 7, in "Proceedings of the AAAI conference on web and social media, "Big Data and cognitive computing", "Patterns", in "Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence", "Data", "PLOS One", "Lecture notes in computer science"
During its first year of activity, the project has made progress that has advanced the state-of-the-art research concerning the identification of the socio-economic, mental health, health system, and behavioural "impacts" of the pandemic. On the "data" side, It has released the first version of its Data Atlas, and it has developed original and relevant research in the field of statistics, producing models can accurately forecast the evolution of the pandemics. In the first year, the project has also laid down the foundational aspects for its "policies" and "technologies" parts and has built its dissemination strategy, centred around the project website.

During the second year of activity, the project has further expanded the state-of-the-art research on the socio-economic, mental health, health systems, and behavioural impacts. It has completed the structure of the Data Atlas and has extended forecast statistical models in a spatio-temporal perspective. The project has also advanced the state of the art on the policy side, with innovative responses to the pandemic, and related guidance and governance models; in particular with TRUSTWORTHY AI methods and with the PERSEUS-COVE tool. During the second year, the project has also completed the structure of two technological tools that can improve social and financial inclusion: COCTEAU and S-PEEK, and of new training modules, implemented in corresponding MOOCs.
Summary description of the PERISCOPE project work