Harnessing the Power of Data Analytics against COVID-19: Developing Decision Support Tools for Policymakers

COVID-19 大流行给全球决策者带来了前所未有的挑战。大多数国家都采取了严厉的行动来遏制病毒的传播，包括旅行限制、居家隔离、集中隔离、接触者追踪等。同时，还进行了大量投资，以快速提高医疗保健系统的容量和能力，以满足需求的激增。然而，所有公共干预措施都会产生社会和经济成本，其中包括经济长期停滞造成的巨大经济损失，以及严格隔离策略即将带来的负面社会、心理甚至健康影响。政策制定者需要可靠的工具来在正确的时间做出正确的决定。 本研究旨在设计新的决策支持工具来指导 COVID-19 应对策略。特别是，它将重点关注与人口检疫水平和时间以及卫生系统要求相关的决策。经典的传染病建模技术将与运筹学和数据分析方法相结合，以解决围绕该决策问题的多层复杂性。拟议的工具可以帮助加拿大的政策制定者回答紧迫的问题，例如哪些人群必须隔离、隔离多长时间、何时可以恢复某些活动以及开放什么类型的活动、学生何时可以返回学校、满足预计需求所需的医疗保健资源（包括人员和设备）以及这些政策的人力和经济总成本是多少。

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing unprecedented challenges for policymakers around the globe. Most countries have taken severe action to contain its spread, including travel restriction, home quarantine, centralized quarantine, and contact tracing. Concurrently, substantial investments have been made to quickly improve the capacity and capability of healthcare systems to meet the surge in demand. Nevertheless, all public interventions have societal and economic costs, which include the substantial economic losses resulting from a prolonged shut-shown of the economy and the impending negative social, psychological and even health impacts of severe isolation strategies. Policymakers need reliable tools to make the right decision at the right time. This research aims to devise new decision support tools to guide COVID-19 response strategies. In particular, it will focus on decisions related to the levels and timings of population quarantine and requirements of the health system. Classical infectious disease modeling techniques will be combined with operations research and data analytics methods to address the several layers of complexity surrounding this decision problem. The proposed tools can help policymakers in Canada to answer urgent questions like which population segments must be quarantined and for how long, when can some activity be restored and what type of activities to be opened, when can students return to their schools, what is the required health care resources, both personnel and equipment, to meet the projected demand, and what is the total cost of these policies, both human and economic.