Tackling COVID-19 Challenge with Advanced Technology

Introduction

Globally, as we all know the novel Coronavirus outbreak has now hit millions of lives across the nations. Certainly, the onset of the COVID‐19 crisis has determined to have a profound impact on the health, social, economic, and political spheres.

In today’s age of information, the good news is that our world-wide connectivity proves to provide us with a strong advantage in fighting an infectious disease like this one. To identify outbreaks, we can analyse masses of data across diverse parts of the world & utilize advanced machine-learning paradigms to predict future-movement across geographies.

Many countries, in fact, have already harnessed technology to address some of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis:

1. China has made extensive use of Facial recognition to identify individuals on the streets, which may have a fever and especially those who fall under the urgency of being quarantined.
2. Israel has deployed mass location-tracking systems via mobile phones to keep tabs on those in quarantine.
3. South Korea has developed an app to help alert citizens of the known cases in their vicinity.

Sunartek’s Approach: Using Big Data Tactic to Confront COVID‐19 Challenges

In situations like these, one needs to run an emergency implementation plan through big data practices as mentioned below to discover and assess the risk of each individual based on their travel history, the amount of time they have spent in those virus hotspots, & their potential exposure towards people carrying the virus.

1. Usage of Telco data and Mobile App data:
    – To trace the movement history of the infected known-cases, and keeping a check on them against each other.
    – To trace the movements of other individuals who are interested and provide them with accurate alerts.
    – To identify locations where large numbers of individuals were together in the same place & warn others regarding who may have  attended the same
        event.

2. Using a specially-designed app that allows the citizens to be informed about when they might have crossed paths with an individual who is already infected or is at a high risk of being infected.

3. Using social media and online sources to track:
    – Large events and gatherings
    – Photos and videos of people, indicating who are under quarantine and who are out and travelling.
    – Cases of fake news relating to COVID‐19

When adopted together, we at Sunartek believe that all these measures will allow any nation to quickly implement some of the most powerful tools which are also used by nations such as Singapore to contain the risk by utilizing contact-tracing and running epidemiological investigations.

Functionality: How Does it Work?

1. The known cases which are infected are contacted by the authorities and are requested to allow using their location data which is recorded via their smartphones (For example, Facebook & Google). To make it possible, they are required to login to a custom‐made electronic form and provide their credentials i.e. username and password.

2. Sunartek uses sophisticated geospatial algorithms to determine the following:

    a. To recognize where the existing cases met: By gathering this information, it would support the epidemiological investigations with critical
          information on the earlier movements of an infected person.
    b.  To identify cluster-based locations where a large number of infected cases were together (For instance: For prayer at a religious gathering or a large
          get-together dinner)

3. Other individuals who opt for this service, may share their locations as above or use a custom‐made mobile app to track them & inform them if they are in any risk (having been in the vicinity of a person who was later determined to be infected).

4. Social Media Monitoring is used to identify large gatherings: It is carried out to recognize people who appear in events and were actually supposed to be in quarantine and are trying to escape from it, as well as any fake news related to COVID‐19. This observation would also aid in sending an alert on any event which appears to have more than 30 participants planning to gather for any pre-planned happenings.

With Sunartek, the use of advanced technologies and adopting approaches like Big Data could significantly contribute to limiting the spread of the disease & fight the outbreak efficiently & effectively by pragmatically delivering benefits people can appreciate.