A team of engineers from the University of Houston has published a study in Nature about how international air travel has impacted the spread of COVID-19. Using a new AI tool, they found infection hotspots linked to air travel, identifying key areas that greatly contribute to the spread of diseases.
The study highlighted that Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America were the main regions driving the pandemic due to the high number of international flights from these areas. “Our AI tool offers a powerful way to study global pandemics and can help policymakers make smart decisions about air travel restrictions during future outbreaks,” said Hien Van Nguyen, the lead researcher and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
The AI Tool
The team developed a program called Dynamic Weighted GraphSAGE. It analyzes large networks of constantly changing data, such as flight schedules, to find patterns and trends. “It looks at how different locations are linked over time to understand how factors like disease spread or travel patterns are connected,” said Van Nguyen.
To see how air travel affects the spread of infections, the researchers tested their model with small changes (perturbation analysis) and studied flight connections between different regions and countries. This helped them see which parts of air traffic have the biggest impact on virus spread and which flight reductions could most effectively lower predicted global cases.
The Strategies
“We suggest air traffic reduction strategies that could help control pandemics while minimizing travel disruption,” said Van Nguyen. “Reducing flights from Western Europe could significantly cut global COVID-19 cases. This approach is a new way to use analysis on networks to improve pandemic forecasts.”
Although the findings are based on COVID-19, the insights can be applied to any future pandemic, said Van Nguyen.
The study also involved researchers from the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
Source: technologynetworks
