A health worker disinfects an office room at a call center in Suwon, south of Seoul, on March 11, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – The state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology that anticipates the risk of coronavirus infection at populated facilities.
The research team used the institute’s content creation software designed for simulating an accident at a nuclear power plant to render a populated facility and the movement of visitors.
The institute then applied a newly developed infection risk model to estimate the risk of infection.
Applying the simulated model to the actual infection cluster that occurred at a call center in Seoul’s Guro District last March showed results that were similar to the epidemiological study published by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.
The coronavirus outbreak at a call center showed a 43.5 percent infection rate, in which 94 of 216 employees at a local call center were infected with the coronavirus.
The simulated model gave a similar estimate of 50 percent.
The simulated model was able to anticipate the risk of infection by calculating various factors, including the number of people with or without protection masks, the route each person took to come to or leave the workplace, and the chances of each person running into others at an elevator or in restrooms.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
