Statistical analysis of the community lockdown for COVID-19 pandemic

Appl Intell (Dordr). 2022;52(4):3465-3482. doi: 10.1007/s10489-021-02615-9. Epub 2021 Jul 7.

Abstract

As the global pandemic of the COVID-19 continues, the statistical modeling and analysis of the spreading process of COVID-19 have attracted widespread attention. Various propagation simulation models have been proposed to predict the spread of the epidemic and the effectiveness of related control measures. These models play an indispensable role in understanding the complex dynamic situation of the epidemic. Most existing work studies the spread of epidemic at two levels including population and agent. However, there is no comprehensive statistical analysis of community lockdown measures and corresponding control effects. This paper performs a statistical analysis of the effectiveness of community lockdown based on the Agent-Level Pandemic Simulation (ALPS) model. We propose a statistical model to analyze multiple variables affecting the COVID-19 pandemic, which include the timings of implementing and lifting lockdown, the crowd mobility, and other factors. Specifically, a motion model followed by ALPS and related basic assumptions is discussed first. Then the model has been evaluated using the real data of COVID-19. The simulation study and comparison with real data have validated the effectiveness of our model.

Keywords: Agent-based simulation; COVID-19; Epidemic process analysis; Lockdown.