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Sim Epidemic
Dotnaught writes "Scientific American has an intriguing story about EpiSims, an outbreak simulator. Designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), it deals with a social networking of a different sort: 'To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann. She has short brushes with family members during breakfast and then with other commuters or carpoolers on her way to work. Depending on her job, she might meet dozens of people at work, with each encounter having a different duration, proximity and purpose.'"
But, the point is that, since we don't sufficiently understand which variables have what effect to create a general model, we can't really tell which strategies were extremely effective in historical outbreaks. We can't make policy based on this.
Put identity in the browser.
For a minute there, I thought this article was going to be about how millions of teenage girls are displaying frightening symptoms: siting inside all day instead of socializing, playing computer games all day, turning away from reality. I guess the Sims has the power to turn girls into guys. But that's not what this is about...
Since this is presented as a tool on which to base political policy, I am quite alarmed.
While you are making a joke, this actually brings into question several of the assumptions underlying this model. The social networks employed by this model are very simple compared with real life. Even though they are rigged to have similar power-law statistics, the model used may not be able to reach useful results. Critical details in the social networking of super carriers and patient zero are handled poorly, IMHO and that's only based on the article, basic college stats and high school level intro to sociology.
For instance, for any STD model will have to take into account the many over layed and distinct networks of sexual interactions. Sexually active high school students such as in your teenage girl joke have a very different social network pattern from adults. Another pattern is common among college students. Trying to use the model from the article would lead to incorrect results for their population and would deviate significantly from reality.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
I also think that, (last time I checked, anyways) the government agencies base their models for the evolution of infectious disease on Burnette and White's model which is based primarily on airborne diseases, but applied, often badly, to waterborne diseases.
Sexualy transmitted epidemics like 'the AIDS epidemic' make for difficult modles because people's sexual behavior has changed dramatically from 1950 - the present. Like you said, so many factors there.
If they did this, it would be nice if it were possible to alter the virulence, incubation time, genetic diversity and mutation rate of a particular pathogen.
Likewise, it'd be nice if you could model virulence. If you infected people with a highly virulent airborne virus in California, by the time it got to New York it would be slightly less virulent because airborne viruses tend to evolve towards fairly benign coexistance over the long run (If your host is sick at home in bed, he isn't in the office passing the disease on to his coworkers.)
If you have any information on the planning of these games, I'd love to see it.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
You have a few issues that you have to consider in any given model:
;-)
1) Vectors (i.e. sexually transmitted/blood-based infections like AIDS will behave differently than airborn-short-distance illnesses like SARS). This
2) Contagious exposure time: Ebola will be far less dangerous than HIV because it is much more quickly progressing.
These parameters will change the outcomes of the simulation.
A simulated epidemic, not an epidemic of simulations
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The current simulator has a model of Portland in it. A mod for San Francisco is an obvious next step.