The current COVID-19 pandemic and the health crisis have demonstrated the need for the early detection of epidemic outbreaks to improve containment and mitigation processes.
To respond to this challenge, the first Epidemiological Observatory was set up in Catalonia in July 2020 with the aim of detecting and predicting the behavior of COVID‑19, as well as potential future epidemics.
The creation of this Observatory was a public-private initiative promoted within the Catalonia.AI strategy and combines the efforts of the Regional Government of Catalonia, through the Department of Digital Policies and Public Administration (Departament de Polítiques Digitals i Administració Pública) and the Department of Health (Departament de Salut); medical and health institutions (Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol and Fundación Lucha contra el Sida); leading technology innovation and research centers and research groups (Center for Innovation in Data Tech and Artificial Intelligence, Eurecat, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Rovira i Virgili University, and University of Girona); the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona; the Global Health Institute of Barcelona (ISGlobal, Instituto de Salud Global); mobile telephone operators (Telefónica and Orange); and the Mobile World Capital Barcelona. In addition, the project is also supported by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) Al for Impact.
The Observatory will launch different research projects aimed at analyzing the spread of epidemics through the analysis of data obtained from mobile telephone networks, the census, clinical data, epidemiological data, and environmental and meteorological data that will provide a level of detail that does not exist to date and will help offer improved mathematical models that will aid public health institutions in designing the best strategies to prevent and mitigate the spread of current and future epidemics. Other data are expected to be included, such as, for example, data on waste water or social networks (it will be possible to analyze the state of mind of the population through social networks).
The first of these research projects promoted by the Observatory is titled 'Big Data Analytics for Epidemic Preparedness'. This is the project that I am currently working on together with other members of the GRECS.
The purpose of this project is to develop monitoring and prediction tools for the early detection of future epidemic outbreaks capable of providing the necessary information in order to implement more effective containment and mitigation actions than the current ones. To this end, we are participating in the creation and evaluation of a mathematical model that will be used to compare and predict specific epidemic patterns. In particular, the GRECS group is in charge of studying the role that socioeconomic and environmental variables can have in this model and calibrating their effect on it.
This project aims, on the one hand, to improve the understanding of the spread of pandemics by including more precise clinical, mobile, and climatic data, and, on the other hand, to provide public health organizations with a decision support system based on innovative epidemiological models that will enable them to anticipate and plan for epidemics, as well as to improve the management of public resources in areas such as the health system, mobility, education, etc., by adapting them to actual needs.