The outbreak and emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic affected every aspect of human activity, especially the transportation sector. Many cities adopted unprecedented lockdown strategies that resulted in significant nonessential mobility restrictions; hence, transportation network companies (TNCs) have experienced major shifts in their operation. Millions of people alone in the USA have filed for unemployment in the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak, many belonging to self-employed groups such as Uber/Lyft drivers. Due to unprecedented scenarios, both drivers and passengers experienced overwhelming challenges that might elongate the recovery process. The goal of this study is to understand the risk,more »
This content will become publicly available on December 24, 2021
Cohorting to isolate asymptomatic spreaders: An agent-based simulation study on the Mumbai Suburban Railway
The Mumbai Suburban Railways, locals, are a key transit infrastructure
of the city and is crucial for resuming normal economic
activity. Due to high density during transit, the potential risk of
disease transmission is high, and the government has taken a wait
and see approach to resume normal operations. To reduce disease
transmission, policymakers can enforce reduced crowding and mandate
wearing of masks. Cohorting β forming groups of travelers
that always travel together, is an additional policy to reduce disease
transmission on locals without severe restrictions. Cohorting allows
us to: (π) form traveler bubbles, thereby decreasing the number of
distinct interactions over time; (ππ) potentially quarantine an entire
cohort if a single case is detected, making contact tracing more
efficient, and (πππ) target cohorts for testing and early detection of
symptomatic as well as asymptomatic cases. Studying impact of
cohorts using compartmental models is challenging because of the
ensuing representational complexity. Agent-based models provide
a natural way to represent cohorts along with the representation
of the cohort members with the larger social network. This paper
describes a novel multi-scale agent-based model to study the impact
of cohorting strategies on COVID-19 dynamics in Mumbai.
We achieve this by modeling the Mumbai urban region using a
detailed agent-based model comprising of 12.4 million agents. Individual
cohorts and their inter-cohort interactions as they travel
on locals more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10213749
- Journal Name:
- ArXivorg
- ISSN:
- 2331-8422
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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