Project overview
HERoS is a Horizon 2020 project funded under the ‘SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020 – Advancing knowledge for the clinical and public health response to the 2019-nCoV epidemic’ call. As a social sciences research project, HERoS addresses the need to understand the social dynamics of the outbreak and the related public health response. The work will be conducted between April 2020 and 2023.
The overall objective of HERoS is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the response to the Covid-19 outbreak by generating actionable knowledge four areas: governance, models in epidemics, medical supply chains, online misinformation.
Governance
HERoS seeks to understand and model different co-ordination structures and governance arrangements. The objective is to identify bottlenecks; develop procedures for efficient information sharing across countries and hierarchical levels; and to propose policies for improved crisis governance, focusing on responders to public health emergencies.
Epidemiological and behavioural modelling
HERoS models the impact of local policies and human behaviour on the spread of the disease. The aim is to guide public decisionmaking in conditions of deep uncertainty.
Medical supply chain management
HERoS evaluates the impact of cascading effects across global supply chains and provides recommendations to improve management of medical supply chains.
Online misinformation
HERoS studies the co-spead of online misinformation and fact-checks with the aim of developing a new method to retrieve actionable information from social media in order to detect rumours and misinformation early.
MOOC - Health Emergency Response During a Pandemic
Learners worldwide can take the MOOC Health Emergency Response to a Pandemic via the FutureLearn platform. The course distils findings of the HERoS project.
The MOOC is composed of four modules. In the first module, participants will be introduced to the assessment of pandemic scenarios and decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. The second module will be dedicated to identifying governance issues and the evaluation of various pandemic responses. In the third module, gaps in medical supply chains, as well as possible solutions, will be discussed. The final module will tackle online misinformation in the context of a public health emergency.
The MOOC was launched on the FutureLearn platform in February 2023. This is an ‘always on’ course, meaning that users can take the course independently at any time.
Impact
This project will innovate social science research in epidemic outbreaks and combines methodological and process innovation which connects multiscale epidemics modelling, policy-making, governance, information sciences and supply chain management. Through integration with the humanitarian planning and decision-making processes, HERoS contribute to more efficient and effective policies and governance structures. HERoS makes use of collective intelligence approaches to support self-organisation of decision-makers at different levels to improve the epidemics response locally on the ground in real-time while contributing to more efficient information management, netcentric governance and logistics.
The HERoS Consortium
The consortium brings together the resources of 11 participating organisations from six European countries – Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Italy – and the United States, each excelling in their respective field and with significant research experience. Expertise areas include: humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (Hanken), epidemiological modelling and policy design (TU Delft), crisis governance (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), machine learning and information sciences (Open University), public health services (Nordic Healthcare), space research and geoinformation (Crisis Information Centre), UAV development (SQUADRON), health emergency responders (Polish Center for International Aid, Italian Red Cross, Project HOPE) and project management (ARTTIC).
HNPW webinar: recording and slides available
HERoS presented its objectives, main finding to date and current lines of research at the online Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks 2021 - an event co-hosted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and by the Swiss...
HERoS will be present at the Humanitarian Networks & Partnerships Week 2021
The HERoS project will the presented at the online edition of the Humanitarian Networks & Partnerships Week 2021 - an event organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The session dedicated to HERoS will take place on 29...
New ‘logistics for pandemic response’ training module
Partner Hanken Scool of Economics has developed a pandemic response training module that will be part of the Introduction to Humanitarian Logistics MOOC that it currently offers. The 'Disease Outbreaks’ module draws from the research carried out within HERoS and...
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📺 The HERoS Final Stakeholder Conference - which presents project findings in the areas of governance, epidemiological and behavioral modeling, medical supply chain management and online misinformation - is now available for online viewing! @CORDIS_EU
🚨There's still time to register for @Resistire_EU's webinar on future research on health inequalities!
We look forward to the discussion with:
-Aziz Naji, Programme Coordinator @belspo
-Raffaella Bucciardini, Health Equity Unit Director @istsupsan
📌 https://resistire-project.eu/.../webinar-coming-soon.../
➡️ COVID19-related trauma and the need for organizational healing in a Dutch nursing home https://shorturl.at/tAHKO
➡️The corona pandemic and participatory governance: Responding to the vulnerabilities of secondary school students in 🇪🇺https://shorturl.at/mAIX4
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003606.
![[New publication] Are preparedness indices reflective of pandemic preparedness? A COVID-19 reality check](https://www.heros-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/1-1080x675.jpg)
