Digital transformation of droplet/aerosol infection risk assessment realized on "Fugaku" for the fight against COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the Fugaku supercomputer enabled detailed, rapid, and large-scale digital modeling of COVID-19 aerosol transmission, influencing public health policies and societal behavior in Japan.

Contribution

It introduces a novel CFD-based aerosol simulation methodology, CUBE, capable of high-resolution, rapid, and scalable modeling of virus-laden aerosols for epidemiological analysis.

Findings

Enabled detailed modeling of aerosol transmission in various societal settings.

Achieved rapid simulation times for complex scenarios.

Influenced public health policies and societal behavior.

Abstract

The fastest supercomputer in 2020, Fugaku, has not only achieved digital transformation of epidemiology in allowing end-to-end, detailed quantitative modeling of COVID-19 transmissions for the first time, but also transformed the behavior of the entire Japanese public through its detailed analysis of transmission risks in multitudes of societal situations entailing heavy risks. A novel aerosol simulation methodology was synthesized out of a combination of a new CFD methods meeting industrial demands, CUBE, which not only allowed the simulations to scale massively with high resolution required for micrometer virus-containing aerosol particles, but also extremely rapid time-to-solution due to its ability to generate the digital twins representing multitudes of societal situations in minutes not week, attaining true overall application high performance; such simulations have been running for the past 1.5 years on Fugaku, cumulatively consuming top supercomputer-class resources and the result communicated by the media as well as becoming official public policies.