Exposure notification applications are developed to increase the scale and speed of disease contact tracing. Indeed, by taking advantage of Bluetooth technology, they track the infected population’s mobility and then inform close contacts to get tested. In this paper, we ask whether these applications can extend from reactive to preemptive risk management tools? To this end, we propose a new framework that utilizes graph neural networks (GNN) and real-world Foursquare mobility data to predict high risk locations on an hourly basis. As a proof of concept, we then simulate a risk-informed Foursquare population of over 36,000 people in Austin TX after the peak of an outbreak. We find that even after 50% of the population has been infected with COVID-19, they can still maintain their mobility, while reducing the new infections by 13%. Consequently, these results are a first step towards achieving what we call Quarantine in Motion.
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Quarantine in Motion: A Graph Learning and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework to Reduce Disease Transmission Without Lockdown
Exposure notification applications are designed to help trace disease spreading by alerting exposed individuals to get tested. However, false alarms can cause users to become hesitant to respond, making the applications ineffective. To address the shortcomings of slow manual contact tracing, costly lockdowns, and unreliable exposure notification applications, better disease mitigation strategies are needed. In this paper, we propose a new disease mitigation paradigm where people can reduce infection spreading while maintaining some mobility (i.e., Quarantine in Motion). Our approach utilizes Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to predict disease hotspots such as restaurants, shops and parks, and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) to collaboratively manage human mobility to reduce disease transmission. As proof of concept, we simulate an infection using real-world mobility data from New York City (over 200,000 devices) and Austin (over 36,000 devices) and train 10,000 agents from each city to manage disease dynamics. Through simulation, we show that a trained population suppresses their reproduction rate below 1, thereby mitigating the outbreak.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2107085
- PAR ID:
- 10547272
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400704093
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 82 to 89
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Graph Neural Networks, Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, Epidemics, COVID-19
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Kusadasi Turkiye
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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