Team: 8
School: ALBUQUERQUE HIGH
Area of Science: social science
Interim:
Definition of our problem
Avian Influenza, Bird Flu, has now become one of the most debated health topics today and for good reason. This Influenza virus could be potentially lethal to millions of people if not the world if it is not dealt with immediately. That is why my team hope to help educate many to realize just how devastating this disease can become if we do not eradiate it now.
To do this, we plan to recreate the city of Los Angeles in a Star Logo simulation and let the disease run rampant and see what the economic and social effects of the disease outbreak would cause, from decreased worker productivity to how crippled our economy would become due to lack of imports and exports leaving Los Angeles Harbor.
Problem Solution
Our simulation will eventually recreate and as in much detail as possible, the city of Los Angeles. Our final simulation will try to recreate traffic flow within Los Angeles, trade routes for imports and exports, hospitals and anything else that would create a realistic environment of the city so we can prove that our results are fairly accurate and probable.
Progress to Date
So far, we are still trying to research various topics such as the size and location of the food preparation center(s) are in Los Angeles (slaughter houses, etc.) that could be potential epicenters for a virus outbreak because of the nature of the virus, the size and location of hospitals, residential areas, roads, major work areas, etc. Recently, we have tried to simulate basic disease spread scenarios mainly involving one infected bird and ten turtles that represent humans and how fast the humans will get sick after coming in direct contact with the bird, but so far we're still debugging our code.
Expected Results
We expect to see some sort of effect on the major shipping centers of Los Angeles mainly and how that will effect our nations economy. From research of other major cities or regions within the US, we could hopefully make conclusions on how crippled the US could become as a whole if there was a major outbreak in the city of Los Angeles.
Team Members:
Nilson Cayaditto
Morgan Matthew
Carolina Belmares-Ortega
Elise Gurney
Lauren Howarth
Sponsoring Teacher: Marie Ryan