CovAID

Inspiration

Symbiotic relationships in nature involve relationships between dissimilar organisms, aimed optimising their mutual benefit.

The problem

The Corona virus is spreading across nations, not discriminating between man, woman, rich, poor, black, white, yellow, age, physical condition etc. Predicting the spread of the virus, or controlling the SIR-curve, is a more a question of retrospect than science. And besides a generic insight of the spread, people would like to know their personal risk of infection with the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Asking people to share personal information in order to get an insight of the spread is against privacy legislation and raises security issues.

The solution

The CovAid app allows people to assess their personal risk on infection with the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Based on a minimum of data, stored locally on the mobile phone, this risk is quantified and results in a stress signal. People, as actors in a network, are stimulated to converge to a situation where stress signals are as low as possible.

Based on the theory of symbiotic networks, agents in a network (e.g. people) change their behaviour owing to the stress signals, hence reducing the stress. This means every person gets a personalised risk assessment about the chances of getting COVID-19 and determines appropriate actions to prevent this.

Using the symbiotic network approach no personal data is shared, nor needed in order to assess the risk. Based on your personal and local situation, a personalised risk and possible spread is displayed.

Challenges I ran into

During the weekend the team worked on finetuning the app and preparing a simulation of its core approach. It shows the effect of using the app on the spread of the virus.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The app allows people to assess their personal risk, get appropriate advice and act accordingly, hence reducing the spread of the virus.

Developments

The core of the app is ready for development of the user interface. We also need to further develop the mobile app, in order to fully fulfil personal requirements of users as well as combination with publicly available data such as weather forecasts, data from health organisations and current status of the disease.

What's next for CovAID

The symbiotic network approach applies to any situation wherein logistic optimisation is appropriate, without sharing any vital information of the actors involved. After the crisis the system can be activated in a very early stage, also for other contagious diseases and disasters.