Development of new web-based scenario analysis tool to help international trading businesses plan through the COVID pandemic

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The COVID-19 crisis has impacted millions of people in almost every corner of the globe.Together with its impact on public health, the COVID pandemic has detrimentally affected businesses around the UK and indeed around the world. Lockdowns and social-distancing measures resulted in large hits to the British economy.Companies around the UK and Europe (and, indeed, around the world) desperately require new tools to help predict and plan in a new and uncertain post-COVID world -- indeed, what is needed is an interactive online planning tool which brings together sophisticated epidemic modelling with industry-specific financial and operational parameters to enable simulations of things such as likely global supply-chain disruptions, COVID impacts on markets in different countries around the world, or impending human resource-related issues.AquAffirm intends to develop just such an online tool in this project, drawing upon its recent collaboration with one of the world's leading academic epidemiology groups (MRC GIDA at Imperial College), a collaboration which recently produced the world's leading COVID-19 scenario analysis tool (**covidsim.org**). Uniquely calibrated on a daily basis for 135 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) around the world, covidsim provides decision support associated with key aspects of the epidemic to healthcare ministries globally. The global reach of covidsim and its specific targeting of LMICs ensures equality and inclusion; we intend the new web portal (tentatively titled COVID-LIVE and its subscription only sister, COVID-LIVE-PRO) to do the same, with its free-to-access part enabling global scenario planning and its subscription-only part providing advanced business intelligence features.We will also reduce UK carbon footprint by helping to make businesses more efficient.