CrisisEngine
CrisisEngine enables rapid modelling of mitigation strategies, informing public health decision-making in response to dynamic events. As well as testing ways to stop infection spread, it also maps social and economic paths out of lockdowns.
While the system cut its teeth during a real-world coronavirus response, it will work in any widespread health emergency, including famine, natural disasters and climate change.
Under the hood, CrisisEngine is a computational social simulator that models human behaviour on individual, group and population scales, in actual or hypothetical scenarios. By generating an infinite range of virtual outcomes, it can rapidly reveal unforeseen consequences or unrealised opportunities that might otherwise be missed.
The system integrates three components:
- a proven agent-based model that generates tangible, observable artificial or ‘synthetic’ societies;
- a new modular application that populates these with millions of sim agents, while permitting fine-grain cross-sections in increments as short as 15 minutes;
- a network of human contributors who collectively input relevant data, tailoring the model structures and software to local contexts
With access to real-time data, CrisisEngine tracks individual sims in virtual urban environments, revealing how people and societies flex and strain in a crisis. The design enables models to feed into each other, rapidly and elegantly exploring branching futures.
As an architect of the modelling response to Melbourne’s covid response, Rogue Science founder, Rohan Byrne, was regularly interviewed in mainstream media outlets: Sydney Morning Herald, Channel 7 evening news, The Herald Sun, The ABC
CrisisEngine is live and ready to support real-world research challenges. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch.