Data Analytics and Decision-Making Systems: Implications of the Global Outbreaks

Special Issue of VSI on Data Analytics and Decision-Making Systems: Implications of the Global Outbreaks

Short Title:

Implications of the Global Outbreaks

Managing Guest Editor:

Prof. Desheng Dash Wu, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stockholm University

dash@risklab.ca

Guest Editors:

Prof. David L. Olson, University of Nebraska

dolson3@unl.edu

Prof. James H. Lambert, University of Virginia

lambert@virginia.edu

Important Dates:

• First submission date: 30 December 2020

• Deadline by which all papers should be submitted to the Guest Editors for review: 31 July 2021

The recent outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19) reminded the world of the devastating impact of epidemic and pandemic outbreaks. The outbreak hit China hard, and continues to spread around the globe. Epidemics can be rapidly spread by a group of infectious agents through several methods, threatening the health of a large number of people in a very short time (Medina 2018). The threat to global healthcare from emerging and reemerging epidemics remains critical, and the capacity of pandemic preparedness to confront such threats needs to be strengthened. There is a need for research in the effectiveness of preparedness systems, and in epidemic monitoring to help stabilize economic activities and reduce systematic risks. This would be greatly aided by high-performance decision support systems to keep track of verified events with known or possible impacts on public health or financial market, providing useful data analytic capacities and suggesting proper and efficient reactions. Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based decision support technologies has also shown its potential in the analysis of epidemic diseases, including effectively pre-empting, preventing and combating the threats of infectious disease epidemic; facilitating understanding of health-seeking behaviors and control of public emotions during epidemics (Ginsberg et al., 2009). Today we have a great deal of health data, but utilizing this data in an effective manner is highly challenging. AI offers new tools for public health practitioners and policy makers to revolutionize healthcare and population health through focused, context-specific interventions (Wu et al. 2016, Nam and Seong. 2019, Wu et al. 2019, Chaudhuri and Bose, 2020, Müller-Peltzer et al. 2020, Liu et al. 2020).

This call for papers of VSI on the theme of “Data Analytics and Decision-Making Systems” is intended to publish insights and viewpoints from scholars regarding risk and data analytics in healthcare decision systems. Authors are encouraged to submit their articles addressing the theme of this special issue which are main focus on decision support system in epidemic and pandemic healthcare systems and cases.