A Digital Twin for Vaccination Strategies at Geographic Scales
The Digital Twin for Vaccination Strategies at Geographic Scales project is the first internal research project of UiO’s Centre for Pandemics and One-Health Research (P1H).
Main objective: To develop a digital twin model that enables predictions of transmission given varying levels of efficacies against current and future viruses.
We want to demonstrate the potential of digital twins to understand the effects of different vaccine strategies for “Pandemic X”, the next pandemic with an unknown pathogen. We will explore the effects of different strategies through “what-if” experiments using digital twin technology. A digital twin is a modelling framework that integrates real-time sensor data with model-based predictions.
In this project, we will devise digital twin models to study likely future pandemic scenarios, combining in silico models with real-world data to make experiments as realistic as possible. The digital twin technology will enable us to explore many different scenarios, by means of “what if” experiments with a highly configurable model. Our starting point is a digital twin framework which models a pandemic emergence at the global scale (see our previous work [PNAS 2023]).
For this project, we have composed an interdisciplinary team including leading experts on vaccine development, epidemiology, digital twins and philosophy of science, from the Departments of Immunology, Biosciences, Informatics and Philosophy at UiO. The team further includes renowned international experts in epidemiology and economy for consideration of various strategies of vaccine distribution locally and globally. A focus is on training early-stage researchers towards preparedness for the next pandemics and endemics.
Principal Investigators
- Einar Broch Johnsen (Department of Informatics, project leader)
- Gunnveig Grødeland (Department of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine)
- Anders Strand (CPS/IFIKK, Faculty of Humanities)
- Nils Chr. Stenseth (P1H & IBV/MN)
The project further involves Jason D. Whittington (P1H) and a very strong international network, including collaborators from Penn State University (US), King’s College London (UK), University of Oxford (UK), Tsinghua University (CN).
