tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Increased arrivals by air and urbanisation are the two main factors leading to a growing vulnerability to pandemics in our cities, a University of Sydney research team has found.
Led by the Centre for Complex Systems and the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, the multidisciplinary team found these were two key reasons for an increase in severe pandemic trends?and they fear that local population growth is outstripping the capacity of urban infrastructure to deal with disease outbreaks.
"Air travel and Australians' growing propensity to live near airports is increasing our population's susceptibility to contagions, which has a significant impact on our health services, crisis response and pandemic preparedness," said Professor Mikhail Prokopenko, Director of the Complex Systems Research Group.
"The Australian Census has provided comprehensive data with which to calibrate a nation-level model of pandemic influenza spread and investigate the population's vulnerability to the contagion over a period of rapid urbanisation." said Professor Prokopenko.
The study is the first of its kind to use anonymised data from the 2006, 2011 and 2016 Australian censuses to create a refined simulator which tracked anonymous households and suburbs. The team studied their daily interactions to better understand how diseases spread and how to better prepare infrastructure to combat outbreaks.
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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-12-urbanisation-air-pandemic.html
Led by the Centre for Complex Systems and the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, the multidisciplinary team found these were two key reasons for an increase in severe pandemic trends?and they fear that local population growth is outstripping the capacity of urban infrastructure to deal with disease outbreaks.
"Air travel and Australians' growing propensity to live near airports is increasing our population's susceptibility to contagions, which has a significant impact on our health services, crisis response and pandemic preparedness," said Professor Mikhail Prokopenko, Director of the Complex Systems Research Group.
"The Australian Census has provided comprehensive data with which to calibrate a nation-level model of pandemic influenza spread and investigate the population's vulnerability to the contagion over a period of rapid urbanisation." said Professor Prokopenko.
The study is the first of its kind to use anonymised data from the 2006, 2011 and 2016 Australian censuses to create a refined simulator which tracked anonymous households and suburbs. The team studied their daily interactions to better understand how diseases spread and how to better prepare infrastructure to combat outbreaks.
...
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-12-urbanisation-air-pandemic.html