SARS - Think Ahead

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0333028 Edward Fredkin CMU SARS Think Ahead Project Summary SARS-TA is an analysis and forecasting system for staying ahead of a potential SARS pandemic. It is a new methodology for explaining and communicating the consequences of the various alternatives that governments will face in the battle against SARS. A set of Excel spreadsheets tracks up-to-date historical data for every country in the world. That data, along with various forecasts of the future course of the epidemic based on standard epidemiological models, are displayed in meaningful ways. Clear graphs show the predicted effects of actions and inactions that a particular governmental authority might consider taking. SARS-TA provides a new perspective as to what is likely to happen in the world and in each country. It is designed to provide both understanding and motivation to those in government who must make difficult decisions in a timely fashion. SARS-TA has the capability of demonstrating the likely consequences of a lack of preparedness or of delays in the implementation of specific recommendations. The system is designed to access a special SARS-TA database on the web. The database is updated with the latest epidemiological data from The World Health Organization. Each day the up-to-date data can be downloaded and automatically incorporated into every user's copy of SARS-TA. In addition to giving an accurate picture of what is happening in the world and in every country, this historical data plays a crucial role in the functionality of the system. The purpose of SARS-TA is to give health officials in every country, region and city a better way of understanding the current state of the potential SARS problem, along with interactive calculations and graphical outputs that can better communicate to political leaders who must decide and approve of the actions that may be needed to economically bring a SARS outbreak under control. Different regions of the world have differing amounts of resources and capabilities. There cannot be one best solution for how to address a SARS outbreak that will work in every part of the world. Further, many such regions are ill equipped to be able to design and carry out the best program suitable to their country's particular problems and limitations. What SARS-TA does is to allow a sophisticated numerical evaluation of proposed efforts so as to determine the likely consequent numbers of SARS cases and deaths, along with the total financial burdens, both as direct and collateral results of an epidemic, including the costs of efforts to control the epidemic. SARS-TA addresses a hitherto unsolved intellectual problem: how to optimize various government decision making processes when there is only probabilistic data available to determine the consequences of those decision and when time is of the essence. What we know is that with sufficient resources, wealthy countries often cope very well, while those governments with scarce resources are very often unable to make efficient use of the resources they have. It is clear that systems similar to SARS-TA could be very useful in other epidemics or in the case of other situations where governments need to react quickly despite having incomplete knowledge of what they are facing and of the consequences of their actions.