How Will AI Shape the Future of Pandemic Response? Early Clues From Data Analytics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed critical gaps in our management of systemic risks within complex, interconnected systems. This review examines 10 key areas where artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics can significantly enhance pandemic preparedness, response, and recovery. Inadequate early warning systems, insufficient real-time data on resource needs, and the limitations of traditional epidemiological models in capturing complex disease dynamics are among the challenges analyzed.

Navigating the precipice: Lessons on collapse from the Late Bronze Age.

Around 1200 BCE, the societies of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) in the Eastern Mediterranean experienced a collective collapse, evident in the archeological remains of destroyed and abandoned cities. Following our prior explorations in this topic, we hypothesize that the network structure between the LBA societies amplified compounding threats, producing a cascade of failures that culminated in a precipitous broad systemic collapse. The network, so often seen as a conduit for prosperity, propagated the problems of individual nodes.

The worsening divergence of biotechnology: the importance of risk culture.

In the last 20 years, the field of biotechnology has made significant progress and attracted substantial investments, leading to different paths of technological modernization among nations. As a result, there is now an international divide in the commercial and intellectual capabilities of biotechnology, and the implications of this divergence are not well understood. This raises important questions about why global actors are motivated to participate in biotechnology modernization, the challenges they face in achieving their goals, and the possible future direction of global biotechnology development.

"Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise"-Incorporating uncertainty in risk analysis from Shakespeare to today.

"Modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise."-William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Although the character Hector warns his fellow Trojans with this line not to engage in war against the Greeks, Shakespeare's works are replete with characters who do not incorporate modest doubt, or any consideration of uncertainty, in their risk decisions.

Defining and analyzing health system resilience in rural jurisdictions.

Rural areas face well known and distinctive health care challenges that can limit their resilience in the face of health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. These include problems of sparsity and consequent limited health care provisioning; poverty, inequalities, and distinctive economic structures that limit access to health care; and underlying population health risks and inequalities that can increase vulnerability. Nonetheless, not all rural areas face the same problems, and non-rural areas can have challenges.

Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States.

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models provide specific, quantitative, and evaluable predictions that inform short-term decisions such as healthcare staffing needs, school closures, and allocation of medical supplies. Starting in April 2020, the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.

Resilience-by-Design and Resilience-by-Intervention in supply chains for remote and indigenous communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the fragility of food security and associated supply chains for remote and Indigenous communities. Here we highlight challenges faced by the Tribal Population of Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard) and argue for the inclusion of Resilience-by-Design and Resilience-by-Intervention in supply chain management.

Relationship among state reopening policies, health outcomes and economic recovery through first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

State governments in the U.S. have been facing difficult decisions involving tradeoffs between economic and health-related outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A systems approach for resources management during the COVID-19 pandemic: Multi-agency perspectives from New England.

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States has overwhelmed local hospitals, produced shortages in critical protective supplies for medical staff, and created backlogs in burials and cremations. Because systemic disruptions occur most acutely at a local scale, facilitating resource coordination across a broad region can assist local responses to COVID-19 surges. This article describes a structured systems approach for coordinating COVID-19 resource distribution across the six New England states of the United States.

Can Comorbidity Data Explain Cross-State and Cross-National Difference in COVID-19 Death Rates?

Many efforts to predict the impact of COVID-19 on hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) utilization, and mortality rely on age and comorbidities. These predictions are foundational to learning, policymaking, and planning for the pandemic, and therefore understanding the relationship between age, comorbidities, and health outcomes is critical to assessing and managing public health risks. From a US government database of 1.

The challenges of data usage for the United States' COVID-19 response.

During the coronavirus pandemic, policy makers need to interpret available public health data to make decisions affecting public health. However, the United States' coronavirus response faced data gaps, inadequate and inconsistent definitions of data across different governmental jurisdictions, ambiguous timing in reporting, problems in accessing data, and changing interpretations from scientific institutions. These present numerous problems for the decision makers relying on this information.

The Need to Reconcile Concepts that Characterize Systems Facing Threats.

Desirable system performance in the face of threats has been characterized by various management concepts. Through semistructured interviews with editors of journals in the fields of emergency response and systems management, a literature review, and professional judgment, we identified nine related and often interchangeably used system performance concepts: adaptability, agility, reliability, resilience, resistance, robustness, safety, security, and sustainability. A better understanding of these concepts will allow system planners to pursue management strategies best suited to their unique system dynamics and specific objectives of good performance.

Building biosecurity for synthetic biology.

The fast-paced field of synthetic biology is fundamentally changing the global biosecurity framework. Current biosecurity regulations and strategies are based on previous governance paradigms for pathogen-oriented security, recombinant DNA research, and broader concerns related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Many scholarly discussions and biosecurity practitioners are therefore concerned that synthetic biology outpaces established biosafety and biosecurity measures to prevent deliberate and malicious or inadvertent and accidental misuse of synthetic biology's processes or products.

An Analytical Perspective on Pandemic Recovery.

After implementing restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus, governments in the United States and around the world are trying to identify the path to social and economic recovery. The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have published guidelines to assist US states, counties, and territories in planning these efforts. As the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has not been uniform, these central guidelines need to be translated into practice in ways that recognize variation among jurisdictions.