A Generic Approach for Allocating Movement Permits During/Outside Curfew Period during COVID-19

Abstract

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, different exciting concepts around solutions, technical components, smartphone applications, and novel wireless services are needed to adapt to the new lifestyle standard that emerged from the COVID-19 crisis. In this context, social distancing was imposed to prevent or decrease significantly further transmission of the COVID-19. In other words, research results have shown that slowing the spread of COVID-19 is the way to save people’s lives and relieve the burden on health-care systems. This social distancing can be tracked using cell phone movement/data. This paper presents a new approach/algorithm for allocating and optimizing/adapting the movement permits during/outside curfew periods inside workplaces, buildings, companies and institutions. This approach is an effective tool to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by promoting health safety during the pandemic, especially in places where social distancing can be difficult. Consequently, this paper presents a technological solution to automate the process of giving movement permits in workplaces. The paper results showed that the proposed strategy of social distancing inside buildings is effective enough to flatten the curve. Furthermore, health authorities are not required to recommend staying home to slow the spread of COVID-19. Consequently, this paper introduces a solution for the resource sharing problem (resource allocation problem), where multiple agents (people or robots) of a system trying to move reliably in their environment. The biggest concern of these agents is to avoid collisions (infections). As a result, the experiments carried out in this paper showed the high performance of the designed algorithm complying with COVID-19 social distancing regulations.