The conference Health Emergency Response in Interconnected Systems will present the findings of the HERoS project, which conducted research between 2020 and 2023 in the context of the COVID-19 crisis to generate actionable knowledge that contributes to improving pandemic response under four areas: governance, models in epidemics, medical supply chain management, and social media analytics.

GOVERNANCE

Research led by Vrije University Amsterdam (Netherlands)

HERoS proposed a whole-of-society governance framework to understand formal and informal decision making during crisis situations. Vulnerabilities and unintended consequences of COVID-19 policies on nursing home residents and secondary school students were studied using visual ethnographic and participatory methods. This research area also conferred attention on transnational governance arrangements for pandemic response: COVAX, EU Advanced Procurement Agreement, international deployment of emergency medical teams.

MODELS IN EPIDEMICS

Research led by Technical University of Delft (Netherlands)

HERoS developed agent-based and coupled behavioural and epidemiological models as well as visualisation tools. More broadly, this research area seeks to understand how models and data can be used to inform public decision making in conditions of deep uncertainty.

MEDICAL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Research led by Hanken School of Economics (Finland) 

This research area identified gaps in medical supply chains as illustrated by the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this basis, the project formulated recommendations to secure medical supplies. This work package also analysed the cascading effects and economic impact of supply chain disruption. Finally, HERoS carried out simulations and developed workflows and standard operating procedures to advance towards delivery of medical supplies to quarantines or remote zones using unmanned aerial vehicles.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

Research led by Open University (United Kingdom)

The HERoS project developed and evaluated tools and methods to automatically detect and mitigate the impact of online misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. HERoS analysed more than three years of fact-checks and social media data for understanding the relationship between fact-checking and misinformation across topics and demographics and developed the Fact-checking Observatory (), a website that generates human-readable weekly reports about the spread of covid-related misinformation and fact-checks. As part of its research on misinformation, HERoS also investigated the effectiveness of a Twitter bot in reducing the sharing of misinforming content.