Outbreaks: 'tsunami' in the global economy and technology is a one-year Aberystwyth University Research Fund sandpit research project.
The project investigates the spatial and temporal impacts of global pandemics on the technological, economic and health aspects on a global scale. Specifically, it examines data and impacts at pre, current and post crisis. It builds models that draw on previous globalised health crises such as HIV/AIDs, Ebola, Influenza, COVID in order to assess current impacts and also develop valuable insights into the short-term and longer-term impacts and to further predict post COVID-19 impacts.
The outcome models will be used to understand how to better prepare and minimise the impacts of any future global outbreaks.
This 12-month pilot project adopts a geo statistical approach, involving GIS, statistics, machine learning and artificial algorithms that interrogate global datasets. The global datasets encapsulate the health, technological and economic variables and are secondary data obtained from global data portals such as the United Nations (UN), World Bank (WB), World Health Organisation (WHO), and John Hopkins University (JHU) etc.