Opensource software simulations towards understanding, monitoring and controlling COVID-19 transmission by managing air, people distancing and adapting urban environments: ventESI

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For both providers and users, confidence in returning to more normal levels of behaviour around public utilities, leisure facilities, social and work-based interaction relies largely on informed choices to minimise exposure to Coronavirus and mitigate its transmission. COVID-19 spreads via aerosols, airborne particles from an infected person's breathing leading to direct or indirect contamination of third parties in communal settings. It can happen anywhere; restaurants, theatres, places of worship, stadia, waiting rooms, gyms, public transport, where uncontrolled air movement creates an infinite number of permutations in transporting particulates from a carrier. Hence, the simulation of air movement in fixed urban settings with controlled ventilation and manageable interventions provides highly practical means of mitigating transmission. We aim to pre-validate all the relevant physics modelling bases, establish defaulting best practices in the use of this digital technology, create measures to assess the effectiveness of urban layouts and, most importantly, provide access for non-experts to model air movement and assess several prevention interventions. The digital technology is based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The outcomes of this projects give UK general public utility providers access to simulations of air-movement "try-out" scenarios via high performance computing (HPC) facilities in the UK and other HPC or Cloud-computing providers.