1. Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa Sci-GaIA Final Conference
Friday, 24 March 2017
CSIR – Pretoria – South Africa
Dr Anastasia Anagnostou
Modelling & Simulation Group, Department of Computer Science, Brunel University London

2. Outline Modelling & Simulation Group at Brunel University London
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation
Physical activity interventions simulation
HIV testing clinics in South Africa simulation

3. Brunel M&S Group Director: Dr Simon JE Taylor
e-Infrastructures & e-Science in Africa
eI4Africa, Sci-GaIA, TANDEM
Healthcare simulation
EMPHASIS: Physical activity interventions
Emergency Medical Services
MAPGuide: Atrial fibrillation & prostate cancer pathways
High Performance, Distributed Simulation
Ford, Saker Solutions, Sellafield, Standards (Standard SISO-STD )
Cloud-based Simulation
CloudSME, CraftBrew, AIMS (MSaaS), COLA
Research-led Education
Courses (NATCOR, PG, UG) and student projects (Industry, Hillingdon Hospital, NASA, …)

4. Modelling & Simulation (M&S): Infection network

5. Modelling & Simulation (M&S): Infection network

6. Infectious disease simulation
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation
Created to demonstrate open science principles in Africa
Thanks to Adedeji Fabiyi!
Agent-based Simulation written in REPAST SIMPHONY (java-based open source)

7. Infectious disease simulation
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation
Models the behaviour of an infectious disease with an annual outbreak
There are three types of agents that represent:
Susceptible population
Infected population
Recovered population
A susceptible agent becomes infected when gets in contact with an infected agent
An infected agent recovers after a period of time and becomes recovered agent
A recovered agent has a certain level of immunity which decreases after a number of contacts with infected agents and then can be infected again
We want to study the behaviour of the outbreak when the population dynamics population change

8. Infectious disease simulation
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation

9. Research artefacts of simulation
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation
Research artefacts of simulation
Simulations
Models
Data
Results
Computing resources
How do you get scientists to easily (openly) access these research artefacts?
Approach
Store the simulation software, model, data (results) in an Open Access Document Repository assign DOIs
Access the software via a Science Gateway
“Access” the scientists via ORCiD

10. Taylor, S.J.E. et al. “Demonstrating Open Science for Modeling & Simulation Research” DS-RT 2016 to appear.
Concept Paper

11. Science Gateway (web link)
Me (ORCID)
“Package” (DOI link)
Software (DOI link)
Data (DOI link)
Science Gateway (web link)

12. Submit your documents to a OADR

13. Example DOIs

21. Finally - Make it all searchable

22. Physical activity interventions simulation (EMPHASIS)
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Physical activity interventions simulation (EMPHASIS)
UK DoH funded, lead Prof. Fox-Rushby, HERG (Brunel)
Agent-based Simulation written in REPAST SIMPHONY (java-based open source)

23. Physical Activity ABS

24. Next steps Currently undergoing translation into an open simulation
Depositing the artefacts into OADR
Creating science gateway application
Begin collaboration between Brunel and the University of Ghana to study Physical Activity interventions in Ghana
Challenge
Can UK population assumptions be translated to Ghanaian population assumptions?

25. HIV testing clinics in South Africa simulation
Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
HIV testing clinics in South Africa simulation
Shout it now is a HIV testing charity in Western Cape
Shout it now wanted to increase the number of people being seen
Collaboration with Simul8 led to DES being used to achieve this

26. Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
HIV testing clinics in South Africa simulation
Brunel initiated an open access version of the model to show simulation in action in an African context
Educators can freely access the simulation at the link below
Example of industrial science gateway

27. HIV testing clinics in South Africa DES

28. HIV testing clinics in South Africa

29. Big Simulations

30. Summary Open Simulation for Public Health in Africa
Infectious disease simulation
Physical activity interventions simulation
HIV testing clinics in South Africa simulation
Thank you
Any questions