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NAVIGATING THE CRISIS With so much information on social media and in the news, navigating the COVID-19 crisis can be difficult, confusing and scary. The top concerns are how this pandemic will play out, and whether governments and health infrastructure will cope. By prioritizing cooperation and information sharing, both internally among researchers as well as externally with other stakeholders across government and civil society, KAUST’s Rapid Research Response Team is working to answer these questions while providing actionable information for the general public and policymakers alike. COVID COMPASS: Making sense of the pandemic from the so-called infodemic – the deluge of information out there on COVID-19 in scientific research papers – is difficult for the scientific community. For the general public and policymakers, who face a barrage of information in the form of daily news articles and millions of social media posts, not to mention conspiracy theories, the task is even harder. To this end, KAUST researchers and other stakeholders launched the COVID Compass Taskforce. Led by Professor Carlos Duarte, the taskforce consists of 26 KAUST scientists alongside journalists, economists and public policy experts, and is committed to quickly publishing relevant and actionable data on the COVID-19 pandemic. This data comes from 20 different verified sources, is analyzed using computational models and then made available through the taskforce’s real-time dashboard. COVID Compass brings the most critical information on the pandemic together in one place. Behind the scenes, KAUST data scientists are run-
ning complex artificial intelligence-powered analysis and computational modeling to project the virus’ evolution. The output displayed on the dashboard is digestible and easy to understand though providing information on four key areas: COVID-19’s spread, the socio-economic cost, the impact on health care infrastructure and the effectiveness of government responses to the virus. Ultimately, the researchers behind COVID Compass want to use data to help answer pressing pandemic-related questions about personal safety, the risk to families, and the urgency of the threat to specific regions and countries. ENDGAME: With projections of infection numbers constantly changing and timelines on vaccines and treatments still unclear, how long the global COVID-19 pandemic will last is uncertain. In some countries, the disease continues to spread at an exponential rate, while in others the curve of new reported cases is flattening. However, under-reported cases and the threat of a second wave of outbreaks means there is still some way to go before societies can fully return to normal. Professor David Ketcheson is putting mathematical modeling to work to understand how transmission might play out. Like water molecules in a wave, the molecules in Professor Ketcheson’s COVID-19 model are people, either infected, susceptible or recovering. Using two parameters – the time it takes for virus infections to double (3-4 days) and the number of people an infected person passes the virus onto (on average 3 people) – Professor Ketcheson’s model has been successful in predicting the virus’ spread.
COVID COMPASS BRIDGES THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE WAY DATA IS PRESENTED AND THE CARLOS DUARTE Professor of Marine Science and Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology
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NEEDS OF THE PUBLIC AND POLICYMAKERS.
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