A Parametric Multi-Agent Simulation Framework to Emulate Social Isolation During the Pandemic

Many people worldwide have been at home for months and practicing social distancing to mitigate the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). What may have started as a single case is now in at least 180 countries. Preliminary surveys indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused people to feel more lonely and isolated than they did before. It may be due to the fear of the virus, death of loved ones, and the lock-downs restrictions imposed in some countries. This paper proposes a parametric multi-agent simulation framework to emulate Social Isolation during the pandemic. Using the proposed simulator we mimic real-world area of 144 km² and population size of 200,000 in order to have near-accurate settings. Various parameters, such as the number of hospitals and capacity, infection rate, recovery, hospitalization, and death, are considered. The simulation is validated on a real-world scale artificial society and is parameterized to a great extent to simulate various settings.