Vidar
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Project abstract

Project rationale

Understanding DCV

Background publication

About

"Pathogens [disease causing organisms] are evolving ways to combat our control methods. The picture is changing and looks as if it will continue to. We're going to have to run as fast as we can to stay in the same place" (Prof. Mark Woolhouse, University of Edinburgh). He has catalogued more than 1,400 different agents of disease in humans. Every year, scientists are discovering one or two new ones. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4732924.stm

Cellular Ecology offers a general overview.

Background:

Contagion Vigilance Automation is a method of risk management. Therefore, it is best considered a type of preventative medicine. Thus, it shares properties with sanitary engineering and vaccination against infectious disease. Proper operation of the system keeps an environment free of communicable agents. In contrast to earlier approaches, counter-measures can be targeted toward specific persons, instead of population or sub-populations at risk. These countermeasures can be taken when risk is seen to rise, as opposed to when illness becomes apparent. Ideally, this prevents the spread of an infectious agent from a presumed carrier to susceptible members of the population.

From a theoretical standpoint, the system tries to identify the actual presence of agents, probabilistically speaking. In simulations of infectious disease, measured input variables include anti-body response to an agent, but typically not the presence of agents themselves. Thus, the presence of an agent remains an estimated variable, which changes prior to those measured, typically after sero-conversion. Contagion Vigilance Automation aims to generate risk estimates that track this simulation variable.

Contact the Editor:

david.stodolsky@socialinformatics.org