New model allows prediction of pandemics

WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- Experts are developing a computer model of the U.S. population that policymakers can use to test strategies for pandemics and other health issues.

The Large-Scale Agent Model at the Brookings Institution's Center on Social and Economic Dynamics is a massive computer program containing 350 million software-generated "agents" that simulate the U.S. population. The agents have the same age and gender structure as the actual population, and they are distributed among the country's 31,000-plus ZIP codes in the same patterns as real Americans are.

These virtual citizens move around much as their counterparts do, allowing researchers to track through time and space the potential progression of infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza.

The model was reported by GovernmentExecutive.com last week.

"The ability to grow artificial societies allows government policymakers and officials to watch how social, economic, biological and civil events develop based on demographics, and then to see the effects of specific interventions from government or other organizations on the outcomes," reported the publication.

It said software agent-based modeling was first widely used in the social and biological sciences and in economics in the early 1990s but had only recently become large and adaptable enough to be used to predict human behavior on a national scale.