NIRG: Rule-based epidemic models

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Epidemic models for pathogens transmitted from human to human are, naturally, concerned with the interaction between individuals that leads to transmission. This is clearly a major simplification; there are many processes at work, from the feedack loop of epidemics on behaviour and interventions, to resource constraints limiting the production of prophylaxis and availability of diagnostic tests, to the response of the immune system to the pathogen and pharmaceuticals. Epidemic models do not normally include an account of these highly influential processes. Instead, only the assumed effect of these processes is sometimes included. This strongly limits the scope of epidemic models.By contrast, in molecular biology, it is typical to consider a much larger class of possible interactions. There exist methods as well as mature software for expressing and simulating systems with many interactions. We have successfully shown that these techniques can be fruitfully applied directly to epidemics, including in a multi- scale setting incorporating immune response and, with suitable extensions, to detailed epidemic reconstruction in a complex community setting.We will build on this success in order to consolidate this capability within the infectious disease modelling community. We will improve accessibility of the tools that we used in our pioneering work, facilitating adoption of our epidemic modelling methods more widely. We will foster a community of practice by conducting a series of case studies to establish documented and standardisable approaches to bringing our advanced techniques to bear on pressing current and future questions relevant to reducing the public health burden of infectious disease.