Page 118 - ITU Journal, Future and evolving technologies - Volume 1 (2020), Issue 1, Inaugural issue
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ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, Volume 1 (2020), Issue 1




                                                               of detection and false alarms. The idea is to use possibly
                                                               disparate wireless data streams for data collection, then
              1000
                                                               integrate this data to improve coverage, reduce probabil-
              900
              800                                              ities of errors and false alarms and create a susceptibility
                                                               graph that could be used for intelligent testing. Based
             num of cumulative infections  600                 on this susceptibility graph, we show how to develop
              700
                                                               efficient sequential learning based algorithms in order
              500
                                                               to minimize the spread of the virus infection. Another
                                                               contribution is that we develop provably optimal algo-
              400
              300
                                                               observable Markov decision processes. In particular, we
                                         policy 1
              200                        no tracing            rithmic solutions that rely upon the theory of partially
                                         policy 2 with p  = 0.02
                                               b               show that current contact tracing plus testing strategies
              100                        policy 2 with p  = 0.2
                                               b
                                         policy 2 with adaptive p  that are aimed at identifying (and testing) individuals
                                                    b
                0           50         100         150         with the highest probability of infection are inefficient.
                                 days
                                                               Instead, we find that it is better to test those individuals
          Fig. 2 – Simulation of the spreading of the virus under different  whose expected impact on virus spread is the highest.
          tracing policies.                                    We formulate the testing problem as a Partially Observ-
             which is approximately the entire population. Even  able Markov Decision Process whose goal is to minimize
             a simple contact tracing technique such as Policy 1,  the expected spread of the virus subject to testing ca-
             reduces the total infections to 617 (which is a 37%  pacity constraints. We provide efficient algorithmic so-
             reduction). Thus, it is worth the effort to establish  lutions to this problem and show via numerical results
             a system that can track the contacts of the people  that our solution substantially reduces the spread of the
             in order to better detect the infections.         virus.
           • Compared to Policy 1 that only considers the con-  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
             tacts with confirmed infected people, Policy 2 also
             takes contacts with untested (but probable to be  This work was supported in part by NSF grants CNS-
             infected) people into account, and hence it has a  1618520 and CNS-2028547.
             better performance. This is clearly demonstrated
             in its superior performance in all of the three ex-  REFERENCES
             periments, for example when    = 0.02, we get a    [1] Covid-19 contact tracing: a briefing. https://ww
                                           
             gain of around 12%.                                   w.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1859. (Accessed
           • When    is tuned properly (e.g.,    = 0.02), Pol-     on 07/02/2020).
                                              
                      
             icy 2 performs better. However, the tuning effort  [2] The global economy is expected to shrink by 3%
             is substantial, and might be deemed infeasible in
             practice. For instance, when    = 0.2, the perfor-    this year. https://www.economist.com/graphi
                                           
             mance of Policy 2 is worse than Policy 1. Thus,       c-detail/2020/04/14/the-global-economy-is-
                                                                   expected-to-shrink-by-3-this-year.
             Policy 2 with adaptive values of    is a good option
                                            
             in practice.                                       [3] Robert – robust and privacy-preserving proximity
           • If we are to use only contact tracing and quarantine  tracing protocol. https://github.com/ROBERT-
             facilities, our performance is not very good. Even if  proximity-tracing. (Accessed on 09/17/2020).
             tracing is possible for 2% of the population per day,  [4] Eitan Altman. Constrained Markov decision pro-
             the majority of the population will get infected af-  cesses, volume 7. CRC Press, 1999.
             ter a few months. Hence, it is necessary to combine
             contact tracing and quarantines with other policies,  [5] Hongyun Cai, Vincent W Zheng, and Kevin Chen-
             e.g., avoiding contacts to reduce the number of con-  Chuan Chang. A comprehensive survey of graph
             tacts, and also wearing masks to reduce the virus     embedding: Problems, techniques, and applica-
             spreading probability.                                tions. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data
                                                                   Engineering, 30(9):1616–1637, 2018.
          6.  CONCLUSION
                                                                [6] CDC. How to protect yourself & others. https:
          In this paper, we have provided a detailed blueprint on  //www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/preven
          how to contain the spread of a pandemic by integrating   t-getting-sick/prevention.html.
          the use of various wireless technologies with sequential
          learning based techniques. In particular, we show how  [7] Aaqib Bashir Dar, Auqib Hamid Lone, Saniya Za-
          different wireless technologies could be leveraged to im-  hoor, Afshan Amin Khan, and Roohie Naaz. Ap-
          prove contact tracing efforts and reduce the probabilities  plicability of mobile contact tracing in fighting pan-





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