Modeling and interactive simulation of measures against infection transmission

Abstract

In this paper we develop an approach to modeling and simulating the process of infection transmission among individuals and the effectiveness of protective counter-measures. We base our approach on pedestrian dynamics and we implement it as an extension of the Vadere simulation framework. In order to enable a convenient simulation process for a variety of scenarios, we allow the user to interact with the simulated virtual environment (VE) during run time, for example, by dynamically opening/closing doors for room ventilation and moving/stopping agents for re-positioning their locations. We calibrate and evaluate our approach on a real-life case study—simulating COVID-19 infection transmission in two kinds of scenarios: large-scale (such as the city of Münster, Germany) and small-scale (such as the most common indoor environments—classrooms, restaurants, etc.). By using the tunable parameters of our modeling approach, we can simulate and predict the effectiveness of specific anti-COVID protective measures, such as social distancing, wearing masks, self-isolation, schools closing, etc.