Texture Oracle: A Software Service for Predicting and Responding to COVID-19 Outbreaks in UK Regions Using Twitter Data

纹理预言机：使用 Twitter 数据预测和应对英国地区 COVID-19 爆发的软件服务

• 批准号: 84761
• 金额: $ 21.9万
• 依托单位: TEXTURE AI LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=84761
• 关键词: Texture; Oracle; Software; Service; Predicting

**Ambition:** Texture Oracle will use Twitter data to (1) predict COVID-19 outbreaks in UK postcodes and (2) evaluate the effectiveness of public health messaging designed to prevent or tackle outbreaks. Academic research shows that disease outbreaks can be predicted by way of patterns in language use; we will use team members' original research to improve existing methods and apply them to COVID-19\. Similarly, advances in AI and natural language processing make it possible to establish a message's 'echo' in social media: this will allow us to grade the effectiveness of public health messaging. Oracle will therefore complement biomedical and public health responses to COVID-19 with an independent layer of predictive and evaluative capacity based on language data.**Predicting COVID-19:** There are two ways in which we aim to predict the increased likelihood of a COVID-19 outbreak in an area:* _Tracking risky behaviour_: COVID-19 is more likely to occur when people fail to observe social distancing and quarantine measures. Typically, people responsible for this kind of risk-taking experience future rewards as less valuable than present rewards; thus, avoiding infection is felt as less valuable than near-term gratification. The tendency to devalue future rewards can be inferred from how a piece of language refers to the future: typically, it is represented as being less certain. Using AI methods developed by project members, we will measure this tendency in region-specific tweets and use it to predict COVID-19 outbreaks* _Tracking symptoms_: Influenza outbreaks can be predicted by tracking symptom mentions in tweets. Research by project members extends this method by providing a new resource for tracking symptom expression. The Lancaster sensorimotor norms classify 40k English words for the extent to which they evoke six perceptual modalities (touch, hearing, smell, taste, vision, and feelings inside the body (interoception)) and five action effectors (mouth/throat, hand/arm, foot/leg, head (excluding mouth/throat), and torso). This creates a much stronger link between everyday language and bodily states than symptom terms alone, allowing us to use the sensorimotor profile of tweets to predict outbreaks.**Evaluating public-health messaging:** Government messaging causes priming effects, meaning that effective messages are reproduced in people's terminology and language structure. We will use AI methods to extract these 'echoes' in tweets, allowing us identify how well public health messages have penetrated on a regional basis. Doing this will give public health agencies the information needed to target (and re-target) their communications to areas most at risk.

** 目标：** Texture Oracle将使用Twitter数据（1）预测英国邮政编码的COVID-19疫情，以及（2）评估旨在预防或应对疫情的公共卫生信息的有效性。学术研究表明，可以通过语言使用模式来预测疾病爆发;我们将利用团队成员的原创研究来改进现有方法，并将其应用于COVID-19。同样，人工智能和自然语言处理的进步使得在社交媒体中建立消息的“回声”成为可能：这将使我们能够对公共卫生消息的有效性进行分级。因此，Oracle将通过基于语言数据的独立预测和评估能力层来补充对COVID-19的生物医学和公共卫生应对措施。**预测COVID-19：** 我们旨在通过两种方法预测一个地区爆发COVID-19的可能性增加：* _跟踪风险行为_：当人们未能遵守社交距离和隔离措施时，COVID-19更有可能发生。通常情况下，承担这种风险的人会觉得未来的回报不如现在的回报有价值;因此，避免感染的价值不如近期的满足感。贬低未来回报的倾向可以从一段语言如何指代未来来推断：通常，它被表示为不太确定。使用项目成员开发的人工智能方法，我们将在特定地区的推文中测量这种趋势，并将其用于预测COVID-19疫情 * _跟踪症状_：可以通过跟踪推文中的症状提及来预测流感疫情。项目成员的研究扩展了这种方法，为跟踪症状表达提供了新的资源。兰开斯特感觉运动规范对40 k个英语单词进行了分类，根据它们唤起六种感知模态（触觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉、视觉和体内感觉（内感受））和五种动作效应器（口/喉、手/臂、脚/腿、头（不包括口/喉）和躯干）的程度。这使得日常语言和身体状态之间的联系比单独的症状术语更强，使我们能够使用推文的感觉运动特征来预测爆发。评价公共卫生信息：** 政府信息会产生启动效应，这意味着有效的信息会在人们的术语和语言结构中重现。我们将使用人工智能方法来提取推文中的这些“回声”，使我们能够识别公共卫生信息在区域基础上的渗透程度。这样做将为公共卫生机构提供所需的信息，以便将其传播目标（和重新定位）到风险最高的地区。