Spatiotemporal modeling and simulation of covid-19 spread in poultry processing plants

Kemenova, O.; Gomez, P.; Hadi, K.; Swarts, M.

The goal of this research is to understand the role of indoor spaces, human behaviour, and organizational parameters in the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in Poultry facilities. Our research focuses on the role of enclosed indoor spaces instead of the traditional, regional scale epidemiological studies. This approach studies a few scenarios through which the interaction between workers in indoor environments impacts the probability of virus exposure, in conjunction with the spatial configurations, sequence of activities, and airflows. We defined and developed a comprehensive parametric modelling approach that includes the most significant parameters that have shown to have an impact COVID-19 spread in enclosed spaces. This publication presents the spatiotemporal modelling approach, which includes building modelling, spatial analytics, agent-based models and simulations, process modelling and the sequence of organizational activities and protocols, as well as Airflow dynamics simulations. This research adds the airborne transmission to the human-to-human and fomite transmission of COVID-19, extending our initial research on the Spatiotemporal Modelling of COVID-19 Spread in Built environments. © American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting, ASABE 2021. All Rights Reserved.