KAIST Develops Technology to Predict Overseas Imported COVID-19 Cases

Schematic diagram of the COVID-19 overseas inflow confirmed cases prediction technology. Provided by KAIST

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] A technology to predict the scale of confirmed COVID-19 cases imported from overseas has been developed by domestic researchers.

KAIST announced on the 19th that Professor Lee Jae-gil's research team from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has developed big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict the number of overseas-imported confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

This technology operates by applying AI to big data quantified from the number of confirmed cases and deaths in various countries overseas, the frequency of COVID-19 related keyword searches in those countries, the daily number of flights to Korea, and the number of roaming customers entering Korea from those countries, with the core function of predicting the number of overseas-imported confirmed cases for the next two weeks.

KAIST expects this technology to be applied in expanding quarantine and isolation facilities and in establishing management policies for entrants from high-risk countries.

The overseas-imported confirmed case prediction technology is also scheduled to be presented under the paper titled ‘Hi-COVIDNet: Deep Learning Approach to Predict Inbound COVID-19 Patients and Case Study in South Korea’ in the ‘AI for COVID-19’ session at the prestigious international academic conference `ACM KDD 2020' on the 24th.

Professor Lee Jae-gil (third from the left in the front row) of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at KAIST and members of the research team are posing for a commemorative photo. Photo by KAIST

The first author of the paper is Minseok Kim (Ph.D. candidate), currently enrolled at the KAIST Graduate School of Knowledge Service Engineering, and co-authors from second to seventh include students Junhyuk Kang, Doyoung Kim, Hwanjun Song, Hyangsook Min, Young-eun Nam, and Dongmin Park.

First author Minseok Kim said, “This research is a case demonstrating that the latest AI technology can be applied to COVID-19 quarantine efforts,” and added, “We expect it to contribute to enhancing the status of K-quarantine.”

Meanwhile, the research on overseas-imported confirmed case prediction technology was conducted with support from roaming data sets provided by the KAIST Institute for Global Strategy’s COVID-19 AI Task Force Team, KT, and the Ministry of Science and ICT’s ‘COVID-19 Spread Prediction Research Alliance.’

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.