Global Forum for Sustainable Transformation provides Covid data analytics

The Global Forum for Sustainable Transformation (GFST) has been coming out with data-driven analytics on the Covid-19 pandemic along with its weekly recommendations, aimed at aiding in decision-making.

The Hyderabad-based Forum shares its findings with the government to help mitigate operational challenges during lockdown. The Forum has also created a framework to think from a data point of view when planning an exit from the lockdown.

Founded by N Chandrababu Naidu, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, the GFST is an apolitical organisation working towards sharing knowledge, technology and entrepreneurship to bring about sustainable transformation.

“The country will have a prolonged fight with Covid-19, with each State peaking differently,” Naidu, founder and Chairman of the GFST, said.

“We provided a direction and a classification of States/districts as to whether they are emerging hotspots, potential hotspots or continued outbreaks. Our team looks at past case data and provides a sense of where a district or State is headed in T+6 days,” Naidu said in a statement.

Finding hotspots

Based on its hotspot-level management, the Forum’s findings recommended that on average, 3-5 cases per hotspot (or containment zone) is ideal as evidenced from cities like Indore and Hyderabad.

The Forum has been predicting the emerging hotspots in several States couple of weeks prior to sizeable number of cases being reported. “On-field results would reinforce what we predict directionally,” he said.

The GFST’s analytics team used a combination of district and sector as a unit, eventually providing inputs for a State with a framework to suit their local situations.

The model takes into account three dimensions of economic, disease control and traceability aspects and 11 variables were created under these three dimensions leading to a comprehensive framework, the GFST team States.

The data used by the Forum is from open sources, government sources and dashboards of States. Furthermore, enhanced with GFST members’ experience on-field, it adds value to fine-tune the insights on the pandemic.

The Forum focus is to present the data aimed at helping take decision on where the next hotspot is likely and the number of hotpots. And significantly, which State-sector should exit first and how.