Two weeks ago we deployed our most recent SocioPatterns experiment at the Infectious exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin. For this particular deployment we added a new feature to the RFID tags’ firmware that enables us to run live simulations on the spreading of infections among the tag wearing visitors of the exhibition.

All visitors are given a SocioPatterns tag.

We were particularly interested in doing so because the nature of the exhibition setting, i.e. new visitors continuously enter, stay a while and then leave the exhibition, is an interesting approximation of the kind of high-flow setting encountered in e.g. train stations and air-ports. It should be clear that it would be extremely difficult to collect the same kind of highly detailed data on the social interactions and infectious spreading in actual train stations or airports.

So far close to ten thousand visitors have visited the exhibition and we have collected detailed data on their social interactions and the spreading of the simulated infection. It goes without saying that we are very exited about this.

Learn more about this deployment on this blog post on SocioPatterns.org.