IIT Gandhinagar researchers, students develop COVID-19 dashboard to help post lockdown operations

A team of researchers at IIT Gandhinagar has developed an interactive 'COVID-19 Dashboard' which will provide different epidemiological scenario-specific information at a city-scale. 

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar has announced that a team of researchers and students at the institute has developed an interactive 'COVID-19 Dashboard' which will provide different epidemiological scenario-specific information at a city-scale. 

It has been developed with an aim to help various stakeholders to optimize their testing efforts and after lockdown is lifted, to contain the community infection.

The dashboard developed by IIT Gandhinagar researchers and students is named as “MIR AHD Covid-19 Dashboard” is a city-scale project which integrates the complex social and transportation patterns with state-of-the-art epidemic spread models, in addition to testing and quarantining rates, and contact tracing rates.

This dashboard, first of its kind for Indian cities, assesses the local risk factors to give a city-scale projection of coronavirus incidence while accounting for various social distancing scenarios. In addition to the epidemiological data, it also disseminates information about potential congestion zones and rerouting under different containment scenarios to the stakeholders.

In areas that are densely populated, intra-community interactions and inter-community interactions become an important accelerator in disease spread. To simplify this complexity, this network-science based epidemiological spread model has been developed using state-of-the-art SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, and Resistant) models with adaptations.

This dashboard has been designed keeping in mind different front line health workers, policymakers, administrators, and the general public. The results displayed on it are as easy-to-understand as graphical representations.

For policymakers and administrators, this dashboard can simulate the rate of coronavirus spread in various zones of a city under different lockdown strategies that have been implemented or under consideration to apply.