2024/11/15 by Yidan Xue, Wassim Jabi, Thomas E. Woolley +1 · 1 voice
Medicine · Mathematics · Engineering · #Infection Control and Ventilation #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #Building Energy and Comfort Optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-024-79525-6
openalex publication_date 2024/11/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A Viral Infection Risk Indoor Simulator (VIRIS) has been developed to quickly assess and compare mitigations for airborne disease spread. This agent-based simulator combines people movement in an indoor space, viral transmission modelling and detailed architectural design, and it is powered by topologicpy, an open-source Python library. VIRIS generates very fast predictions of the viral concentration and the spatiotemporal infection risk for individuals as they move through a given space. The simulator is validated with data from a courtroom superspreader event. A sensitivity study for unknown parameter values is also performed. We compare several non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) issued in UK government guidance, for two indoor settings: a care home and a supermarket. Additionally, we have developed the user-friendly VIRIS web app that allows quick exploration of diverse scenarios of interest and visualisation, allowing policymakers, architects and space managers to easily design or assess infection risk in an indoor space.