Hello from the Delphi research group at Carnegie Mellon University! +We’re a group of faculty, students, and staff, based primarily out of CMU +together with strong collaborators from other universities and industry. +Our group was founded in 2012 to advance the theory and practice of epidemic +forecasting. Since March 2020, we have refocused efforts towards helping combat +the COVID-19 pandemic, by supporting informed decision-making at federal, state, +and local levels of government and in the healthcare sector. Until now, we’ve +been pretty “heads down” with our work, and slow to communicate what we’ve been +up to. But at last … Delphi finally has a blog! This first post serves as an +introduction of sorts. Future posts will dive deeper into our various projects.
+We (Roni and Ryan) are co-leads and co-founders of the Delphi group. +When we started the group back in 2012, +our mission was to develop the theory +and practice of epidemiological forecasting, with a long-term +vision of seeing this technology become as universally accepted +and useful as weather forecasting is today. +In the following years, we developed both nowcasting and forecasting models, +focusing primarily on seasonal influenza in the US. +Our forecasting system is a perennial top finisher +in the Centers for Disease Control’s annual forecasting challenges. +In 2019, we were named one of the CDC’s two +Centers of Excellence for Influenza Forecasting.
+Back when we formed the group in 2012, +the “original four” members were David Farrow, Logan Brooks, Roni, and Ryan. +By early 2020, pre-pandemic, we’d grown to about 7-8 members in size, +and were happily and steadily making progress on flu forecasting and nowcasting, +and making headway into dengue and norovirus. +To learn about the work our group has done in the past, +including some papers we’ve written, software tools we’ve built, +and the real-time epidemiological data server we’ve been deploying since 2016, +check out {{< reflink "/" "our website" >}}.
+When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, we focused all our attention on it. +Our Delphi team +quickly grew to 30+ members, and is still growing. +Most of our members are volunteers, +drawing talent from within CMU and several other universities, +including Stanford, UC Davis, and USC, and also from industry. +The pace has been intense and dizzying at times, +and we’re infinitely grateful for the contributions +and commitment of all our new members—we’d be nowhere without them. +See {{< reflink "team" "here" >}} +for a list of the Delphi team members.
+With new members comes a new breadth of expertise: +our expertise now covers statistical modeling, computation, +systems engineering, user interfaces, visualization, +digital epidemiology, and epidemic forecasting. +We’ve been extremely fortunate to have developed +several new relationships with stakeholders and supporters in government, +the healthcare sector, and the tech industry; and of course, +we’re proud and grateful for our existing relationships, +especially our longstanding relationship with the CDC.
+While Delphi’s long-term mission remains to advance the theory and practice of +epidemic forecasting, since March 2020 our goals are to help combat the COVID-19 +pandemic and save lives and livelihoods. +We aim to support informed decision-making at federal, +state, and local levels of government and in the healthcare sector. +Whenever possible, we strive to make our work useful +to the private and public sectors, other researchers, +the press, and the general public.
+Our strategy:
+Improve pandemic situational awareness and understanding +by providing comprehensive, geographically-detailed, +and continuously-updated indicators of pandemic activity and its impact, +helping to make meaning out of the pandemic information deluge.
Support local, state, and federal governments’ +ongoing decision-making in their attempts to balance +public health concerns with economic preservation, +by providing validated, verifiable, localized, +short-term forecasts of epidemic spread and healthcare demand, +under any assumed level of the local population’s mobility and distancing +behavior.
Analyze and demonstrate the impacts of governments’ +past tightening or loosening of mitigation measures +(e.g., opening or closing schools or businesses, +imposing or lifting bans on gatherings, shelter in place orders, etc.) +on a population’s mobility and distancing behavior.
Engage continuously with our target users to communicate +our findings, and inform our directions and priorities.
Make our products useful and accessible to other +researchers and tool developers, to amplify their impact. +To that end, we’ll continue to make everything we invent or produce +publicly and freely available as soon as possible +and to the greatest degree allowed, including models, +algorithms, software, tools, estimates, and forecasts.
So what have we been doing since March? +We’ve been working towards our strategic goals above, +and have made good progress on some of them.
+Here’s a quick summary:
+We’ve built a number of new indicators of COVID-19 activity. +These are fine-grained geographically +(most of them are available at the US county level) +and temporally (all of them updated daily). +They are designed to shed light on the current picture of COVID in the US, +beyond the typical publicly-available metrics like confirmed cases and deaths.
Some of our indicators are based on massive-scale surveys that we’re running +through partnerships with Facebook and Google, and others are based on +aggregated counts from massive medical claims data sets through partners like +Change Healthcare.
We’ve built a {{< apireflink "api/covidcast.html" "public API" >}}, +and {{< apireflink "api/covidcast_clients.html" "R and Python packages" >}}, +to serve our indicators to researchers and the public. This API provides new +data daily.
We’ve built {{< reflink "covidcast" "interactive maps and graphics" >}} to +display our indicators, and better inform the public and decision-makers.
We’ve developed forecasts of the future spread of the pandemic, +validated them prospectively, and started submitting them to CDC.
In subsequent posts, we’ll dive deeper into many of these projects, and touch on +what’s next for us (a lot… in many ways, we feel that our most important work +is still ahead of us). Until next time!
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