The $500K Pandemic Response Challenge, required teams to build effective data-driven AI systems capable of accurately predicting COVID-19 transmission rates and prescribing intervention and mitigation measures that, with testing in “what-if” scenarios, were shown to minimize infection rates as well as negative economic impacts.
What is the goal of this competition?
The goal of the competition is to build a collaborative AI-For-Good ecosystem to assist in developing regional plans for COVID-19 and future pandemics, resulting in:
- More data
- Better predictions
- Better intervention plans
- Easier path for implementing good intervention plans
- Continual improvement as new data, and new interventions such as vaccination and treatments become available
- Demonstration of improved problem solving by synergizing human
knowledge and predictive/prescriptive modeling - Provide a platform for faster interventions in the future
- Provide blue-print for how to create an AI-for-good global collaborative effort to tackle problems of the scale of the pandemic
More about the Team
Winning first place and $250,000 is team VALENCIA IA4COVID19 (Valencia, Spain), coordinated by Dr. Nuria Oliver, Commissioner of the Presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana and J. Alberto Conejero, Director of the Applied Mathematics Department at Universitat Politècnica de València. VALENCIA IA4COVID19 has collaborated with the Valencian government since March 2020 to leverage data science in the fight against COVID-19. Ultimately, the team’s winning models successfully forecasted epidemiological evolution through their use of AI and data science and provided decision makers with the best prescriptor models to produce non-pharmaceutical intervention plans that minimize the number of infections while minimizing the stringency of the interventions