Experiments using a microsimulation platform show that vaccination against pandemic H1N1 influenza is highly cost-effective. Swedish society may reduce the costs of pandemic by about SEK 2.5 billion (approximately EUR 250 million) if at least 60 per cent of the population is vaccinated, even if costs related to death cases are excluded. The cost reduction primarily results from reduced absenteeism. These results are preliminary and based on comprehensive assumptions about the infectiousness and morbidity of the pandemic, which are uncertain in the current situation.
Economic consequences to society of pandemic H1N1 influenza 2009: preliminary results for Sweden
Posted by – 2009/11/02
Pickman’s Machine: A Reasoning Architecture
Posted by – 2009/11/02
A two-layered architecture for reasoning that uses narratives to guide its behavior is presented. The narratives are interpreted by reactive and deliberative reasoning layers to generate responses to external events, in accordance with internal desires created by the deliberative layer. A C++ implementation of the proposed Pickman architecture is described and tested in five scenarios in which three different Pickman versions are tasked with healing a small population suffering from a virtual plague. It is shown that a Pickman implementation using a static desire generation mechanism is efficient, but unreliable. The dynamic version, on the other hand, is not as efficient, but it performs successfully in all scenarios.