Epidemics Plugin for the UG4 software
github.com
github.com
It appears the EpidemicsRunner software toolkit has been made open source. It was developed by a crossfunctional team of the German Goethe Center for Scientific Computation Universität and has apparently been used in real life settings as guidance tool.
Images, description and source code can be found on https://github.com/devanshr/epidemics
The EpidemicsRunner allows the user to run various algorithms used in epidemiologial modeling. The main feature is its in build editor and support an optimization framework, which allows the user to adjust model parameters to existing data.
It has been designed for ease of use (but still full of features) because its original purpose was as a quick response tool for e.g. local authorities. The vision: A non expert user can quickly generate various scenarios based on local data and decide local measures until expert knowledge arrives.
The tool has been used in various capacities. In order to inspire learning and maybe even help others, it has been made open source.
You can use and modify it however you want. You can also import only the headers to your own C++ program.
If you want to use the GUI, a build script is provided in the EpidemicsRunner folder. All features of the GUI are active if you put it in the plugin folder of the UG4 framework.
jonpoljargo.de
If you don't mind why was the software written in C++?
Remember that simulation of covid from UK with all the pomp and bravado? Not even close to reality.
By the way, all simulations have the same relationship to reality as cartoons. This is just philosophy 101.
Basing your decisions on complicated scientific methods inspires confidence in many people, even when there is no benefit.
It also mitigates responsibility for decision makers, because they can claim that they would have made the perfect decision if only the model's predictions would have been perfect as well.
On the contrary. When you fully understand something, there's no longer a need for a model.
Corona brings live and death questions to the doors of normal people and also plays havoc with our political parties. It is embarrasing to observe to watch them for the most part. Seems for some of them the first problem they really have to work on instead of only talking about it.
Ordinary Differential Equation model, Partial Differential Equation model, Finite Difference model, etc.
Science worked fine. Politics did not. This is not specific to Germany.
That is simply not true. The RKI (Germany's main institute for disease control and prevention) almost exactly predicted the current Covid numbers back in July [1]. The top left of the picture on page 7 shows the prediction under the assumption that 65% of Germans get vaccinated; currently 68% of Germans are vaccinated.
[1]: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/EpidBull/Archiv/2021/Au...
The prediction expected a bell curve peaking at the end of December, at around 400 7d incidence, assuming ~65% vaccinated.
We are at then end of november, ~68% vaccinated, and the 7d incidence is already above 400, and still rising.
We can only hope that they got the shape right, the timing slighly off and the peek not too off.
I personally think that for such a chaotic, human system, a prediction from six-months previous is pretty good if it's within a few weeks and probably less than an order of magnitude.
I actually never expected that somehow my home country would be able to manage better at decisions, instead of the yes/no/but-elections-are-coming that we had here.