Covid Crisis Lab - Seminar Series - Talk by Alain Barrat

Link zoom

https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/91562086141

COVID CRISIS LAB Seminar Series 2022 — Fall edition

Alain Barrat, “Evaluation of containment interventions in infectious diseases simulations: impact of the representation of contact data” 

ABSTRACT

Numerical simulations of infectious disease spread are increasingly based on detailed data concerning human behaviour, such as mobility or contact patterns. These data are crucial so that models can be actionable and inform public health decisions. In this talk, I will first give examples of concrete use of detailed data sets describing contacts between individuals in the evaluation of mitigation measures in two contexts: the efficiency of digital contact tracing, and the comparison of various protocols in schools. I will then ask the question whether the level of detail in the data used to feed the model might impact the conclusions of such studies, by building various representations of the data at different levels of aggregation and running numerical simulations of spreading models and mitigation measures on these representations. Different representations can lead to different quantitative estimations of the impact of a spread and of the efficiency of measures; however, the rankings of protocols according to their efficiency or cost remain coherent across representations, ensuring the consistency of model findings to inform public health advice.

SHORT BIO

Alain Barrat is senior researcher at the Center for Theoretical Physics in Marseilles, France. He has also been research scientist at the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Turin, Italy from 2006 to 2019
and Specially Appointed Professor at the Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative (Tokyo, Japan) from April 2019 to March 2022. From April 2014 to November 2020, he has been vice-president treasurer of the Complex Systems Society. Since December 2020, he is Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters.
His research focuses on complex networks and interdisciplinary aspects of statistical physics. He is co-founder of the SocioPatterns collaboration, which focuses on temporal networks of contacts between individuals, from the data collection to their analysis and use in fields ranging from epidemiology to social sciences.

For further information on the talk, please contact covidcrisislab@unibocconi.it