Data is a powerful weapon in the global fight against Covid-19. A new proof of concept Catalyst project shows how many sources of data can be combined and analyzed on a centralized platform as a service (PaaS) to protect the public, individuals’ health and to ensure buildings are safe. The platform can also provide tools and data as services to help develop applications for internal and external use by very different organizations. The Covid-19 outbreak is stress-testing cities’ emergency response abilities and is a fast-moving, dynamic situation.
Big data collected and aggregated from many domains is crucial to enable governments and public bodies to make informed, effective decisions to save lives and halt the spread of the disease.
However, most public bodies hold data in various, often incompatible formats, and in systems that have little or no interoperability. In addition to these technical difficulties, some parties are unwilling to share data because they want to protect the vested interests of stakeholders. Other don’t dare share because they lack the right levels of data security and oversight, while others cannot because they still they lack suitable channels.
Trust is the key
The Catalyst project, Trusted data-sharing for smart emergency management (Covid-19), addresses this challenge and the solution was demonstrated at the TM Forum Catalyst Digital Showcase on July 16.
It is championed by communications service providers (CSPs) China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, supported by participants Asiainfo, Huawei, SI-TECH and Tianyuan DIC. The three operators draw on knowledge acquired from previous Catalyst projects
– see the recommended videos at the end of the article for more information.
Putting it all together
To build the standard data platform for the current Catalyst, the team drew on TM Forum’s Information Framework (
also known as SID) and Application Framework (
known as TAM). The platform also uses edge computing, blockchain, data fabric (which pulls many types of data from multiple sources) and secure multi-party computing to support collaboration between all the stakeholders. The platform provides real-time, global data to support governments’ efforts to prevent and control the pandemic, as well as to deliver public information for citizens to reassure them and help keep them safe.
Jun Zhu, Chief Architect and Senior Product Director at AsiaInfo, explains that the Catalyst demonstrates a scenario whereby whenever a case of coronavirus is identified and reported by urban hospitals, the platform allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to use CSP data to analyze where patients have been and with whom they have been in close proximity. This enables authorities to trace those at-risk contacts so that they can be advised to self-isolate and curb the spread of the virus.
He adds, “CDCs can also aggregate data from the police and transportation companies to analyze and manage the flow of crowds and logistics to minimize virus transmission. Heat maps based on telcos’ data can provide real-time monitoring to understand how people are moving around and to stop crowds forming”.
The big data platform can also target support for vulnerable people like children, the elderly and those with disabilities and underlying conditions.
How does it work?
The data circulation mechanism is built on blockchain so data owners can embed their rules for whom is authorized to use it, in what circumstances and for which purposes. Hence blockchain ensures data sharing is legitimate, controllable and regulated, with an immutable audit trail which records every transaction in which the data is involved. The team drew on the TM Forum Trust, Security & Privacy Toolkit, which is based on blockchain technology.
Once data rights are blockchain protected, stakeholders can either upload it to the data virtualization center, or download the secured computation model from the privacy computing center.
Data virtualization is based on data fabric technology which pulls data together from various sources then aggregates it to build a unified data model for consumers. In contrast, the privacy computing center uses secure multi-party computation technology so stakeholders can process their data locally.
Edge computing and data governance ensure the data’s quality meets the requirements for data sharing in real time and so is trusted by those who consume it.
The platform provides the city, government, companies and even individuals with a one-stop service for the data and information they need to better understand, analyze and predict situations. The TM Forum Data Analytics Toolkit
was used to develop the data driven application to manage the public health emergency.
A silver data lining for cities
This dark cloud of the pandemic potentially has a silver lining too: The Catalyst demonstrates how these same key technologies deployed to combat the coronavirus outbreak could speed up digital transformation for cities through trusted data sharing. Jun Zhu says, “The team shows how the platform can be useful for managing not only the immediate emergency and its lasting impacts, but also for addressing future challenges and opportunities”.
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