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)
The HERoS Consortium Kick Off Conference
The HERoS consortium held its kick off conference call on 14 April 2020. Partners are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration and to bringing this initiative to a success.
The HERoS Project
The HERoS project officially started its activities on 1 April 2020. Active for 3 years, HERoS will develop open data sets, models, methodologies and open source software that will support decision-makers in the response.
To better understand the decision-making processes observed in the response to #COVID19, we conceptualize the outbreak as a wicked problem and slow-burning crisis. The report ‘Recommendations for #governance and policies in the n-COV-2019 response’, will be published shortly.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003606.
