Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Three Dimensional Spatio-Temporal Cluster Analysis Of Sars-Cov-2 Infections, Keith W. Allison

Masters Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for fine-scale analysis of the clustering of cases of infectious disease in order to better understand and prevent the localized spread of infection. The students living on the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus provided a unique opportunity to do so, due to frequent mandatory testing during the 2020-2021 academic year, and dense living conditions. The South-West dormitory area is of particular interest due to its extremely high population density, housing around half of students living on campus during normal conditions. Using data gathered by the Public Health Promotion Center (PHPC), we analyzed the …

In Silico Surveillance: Evaluating Outbreak Detection With Simulation Models, Bryan Lewis, Stephen Eubank, Allyson M. Abrams, Ken Kleinman

Public Health Department Faculty Publication Series

Background

Detecting outbreaks is a crucial task for public health officials, yet gaps remain in the systematic evaluation of outbreak detection protocols. The authors’ objectives were to design, implement, and test a flexible methodology for generating detailed synthetic surveillance data that provides realistic geographical and temporal clustering of cases and use to evaluate outbreak detection protocols.

Methods

A detailed representation of the Boston area was constructed, based on data about individuals, locations, and activity patterns. Influenza-like illness (ILI) transmission was simulated, producing 100 years ofin silico ILI data. Six different surveillance systems were designed and developed using gathered cases …