Studying Epidemics in Virtual Worlds

A day after news reports about an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, health officials in Allegheny County, Pa., huddled to discuss contingency plans. How should they respond if the virus came to their part of the world? By closing schools? With widespread vaccinations? To test different courses of action, they turned to computer scientists who had built a working model of the county. "It helps come up with recommendations of when and how to intervene," says Dr. Ron Voorhees, chief of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Allegheny County Health Dept.

This is the first time Voorhees has had such technological support. A team at the University of Pittsburgh had built a virtual world, similar to Second Life or SimCity, with the county's 1.3 million residents represented by digital characters. It ran through 15 scenarios, with a variety of government reactions. Ultimately, the county avoided a serious outbreak, but Voorhees says it was well prepared.