The Epiflex Epidemic Modeling System
I initially developed Epiflex in the 2002–2006 timeframe for biodefense modeling. It was published in Theoretical Biology and Medical Modeling in 2006. Development continued on it until 2010, with the addition of many more data logging features, efficiency improvements, and bug fixes. Epiflex modeling was used as the basis of at least one PhD thesis. The software was published as electronic data with the paper. However, development continued for another 5 years.
So, I decided to open up the last developed version of the Epiflex epidemic modeling system. This google drive has the last “delivered” version which is 7.4. The 7.5 zip is a development version with all the source files. It worked well, I just didn’t go through the QA cycle.
I also have a set of predefined model files on that google drive. Run the executable file, and then open up a model file. You can mess around with the parameters for the diseases, including influenza. Go ahead and create a SARS-CoV-2 disease and then run it through the populations. Compare it with influenza.
This is an agent-based object-oriented model. So it actually allocates a person and moves them through the cycles of movement that you define. At 3 million people in 2010, it took a month on the tower computer I had, but that was quite slow compared to current computers. But, I suggest that you start with 10,000 people and then increment up. See how it goes. On a faster computer with more RAM it will be faster. This program tends to get memory bound.
The 7.4 and 7.5 versions have a lot of instrumentation so you can see exactly what happens in the logs. I left this software when I got to where I should make it multi-system to run on a server, so that really huge models could be run. It was designed to be able to do that relatively easily.
I also wanted to split off the display from the run-time system, and have the display only access log files. You can see that in the enhancements and ideas docs.
Model definition files are XML based. Log files are designed to be readable by Excel.
