The HERoS Project
Health Emergency Response in Interconnected Systems
The coronavirus outbreak is continuing to spread. The number of infected people and the death toll continues to rise. As authorities and responders are struggling to contain the spread, news about mass quarantine camps or shortages of personal protective equipment threaten the health systems globally, fueled by rumors and misinformation. The disruptions of (medical) supply chains, the lack of capacity to treat patients and the spread of rumours fuel an atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust, hampering an effective response. While traditional models of disease outbreaks largely focus on infection rates, new methods are needed to integrate behaviour from the bottom up and integrated in macrolevel models to coordinate the response worldwide.
The HERoS Consortium
The consortium brings together the resources of 11 participating organisations from 6 European countries (Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, Poland, France, Italy) and the US Each excelling in their respective field of expertise and with significant research experience.
Objectives
The overall objective of HERoS is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the response to the Covid-19 outbreak. HERoS creates and provides policies and guidelines for improved crisis governance, focusing on responders to public health emergencies, and their needs to make informed decisions. HERoS further improves the predictions of the spread by understanding and modelling the impact of local behaviour on the spread of the disease. Furthermore, HERoS improves the management of medical supply chains for preparedness and response, as well as evaluates the impact of cascading effects across global supply chains.
The members of the HERoS project consist of the humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (Hanken), epidemiological modelling and policy design (TUD), crisis governance (VU-A), machine learning and information sciences (OU), public health services (NHG), space research and geoinformation (CBK), UAV development (SQR), health emergency responders (PCPM, CRI, HOPE) and project management (ARTTIC).
Impact
This project will innovate social science research in epidemic outbreaks and combines methodological and process innovation which connects multiscale epidemics modelling, policy-making, governance, information sciences and supply chain management. Through integration with the humanitarian planning and decision-making processes, HERoS shall lead to more efficient and effective policies and governance structures. HERoS makes use of collective intelligence approaches to support self-organisation of decision-makers at different levels to improve the epidemics response locally on the ground in real-time while contributing to more efficient information management, netcentric governance and logistics.
Project Summary
The Corona-virus outbreak is continuing to spread. The number of infected people and the death toll continues to rise. As authorities and responders are struggling to contain the spread, news about mass quarantine camps or shortages of personal protective equipment threaten the health systems globally, fueled by rumors and mis-information. The disruptions of (medical) supply chains, the lack of capacity to treat patients and the spread of rumours fuel an atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust, hampering an effective response. While traditional models of disease outbreaks largely focus on infection rates, new methods are needed to integrate behaviour from the bottom up and integrated in macro-level models to coordinate the response world-wide.
Partners
European countries
Project duration (months)
HNPW webinar: recording and slides available
HERoS presented its objectives, main finding to date and current lines of research at the online Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks 2021 - an event co-hosted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and by the Swiss...
HERoS will be present at the Humanitarian Networks & Partnerships Week 2021
The HERoS project will the presented at the online edition of the Humanitarian Networks & Partnerships Week 2021 - an event organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The session dedicated to HERoS will take place on 29...
New ‘logistics for pandemic response’ training module
Partner Hanken Scool of Economics has developed a pandemic response training module that will be part of the Introduction to Humanitarian Logistics MOOC that it currently offers. The 'Disease Outbreaks’ module draws from the research carried out within HERoS and...
'; 📖OPEN ACCESS ➡ "Preparing the Humanitarian Supply Chain for Epidemics and Pandemics Response"- a special edition of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management by @EmeraldGlobal https://bit.ly/3fhmzNv
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003606.
