By EMMA GREGORY.If human beings and diseases complied with health orders, there would be no use for F.R.E.D..But, as we know, humans and diseases behave unpredictably and the Department of National Defence recently announced it had invested in FRED, Framework for Reconstructing Epidemic Dynamics..It’s a computer program that models how a disease spreads throughout a population..“Bonnie Henry says, “I’m going to say something [implement a health order],” and what we are going to do is look at what the infection rates look like at two weeks later,” said Frank Wood, associate professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia..“Epidemiologists and Dr. Henry have vast cultural experience about policies and in theory if everyone washed their hands; and in theory if everyone stayed at home; and in theory wore masks, the disease would be gone.”.Wood recently received $199,985 from I.D.E.a.S. (Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security), a research and development program set up by National Defence to sponsor people researching useful technology..Wood likens F.R.E.D. to the video game Sim City..Using a synthetic generic population model, the user can implement a hypothetical disease and a hypothetical policy decision and see how it will affect the spread; factoring in all the identifiable aspects of a population that make it unpredictable..Wood is contractually obligated not to disclose the source of his funding..While Wood didn’t invent the software, he is programming Canadian population data into it. .According to a paper published by BMC Public Health and funded by the National Institute of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “FRED is the first open-source epidemic model designed to use the latest synthetic US population developed by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI, is a non-profit based out of North Carolina).”.“Agent-based models have been applied to such disparate fields as business (e.g., supply chain optimization, logistics, and consumer behavior), traffic congestion, infectious agents, social and financial policy, and the human immune system. In these and other applications, the system of interest is simulated by capturing the behavior of individual agents and their interactions,” said RTI, in a statement..Gregory is a journalist based in Vancouver
