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Paper short abstract

Models are routinely used in policy making to assist next-to-real-time decision making. Investigating models deployed in pandemic preparedness, the paper argues that modelling needs to be understood within the shift towards all-hazard planning and calls for a more reflexive use of these tools.

Paper long abstract

Models are boundary objects (Pieri 2021) and act as ‘travelling facts’ (Mansnerus 2015) often deployed across multiple stakeholders and in multi-agency contexts. Increasingly, they are routinely used in policy making, especially in emergency contexts and in situations characterised by high uncertainty and the need for rapid response.

By exploring how models are deployed in pandemic preparedness, this paper critically appraises the implications of their use in next-to-real-time decision making. It reflects on a range of examples, from Zika infection containment at global mega events to attempts at modelling individual behaviour in an outbreak via online gaming. The examples illustrate different strengths and weaknesses of these practices, black-boxed assumptions and problematic silencing of data limitations, once the models are ‘handed over’ to end-users.

In this paper I argue that we need to understand the increasing reliance on modelling against the backdrop of another key trend – the shift towards all-hazard planning. The move towards an ‘all-hazard approach’ to preparedness aims to achieve flexible strategies, as well as agility and transferability of plans from one crisis to the other (Pieri 2021). Nonetheless, the latter can often result in vague and underspecified plans of action. In this context, models are increasingly sought as tools that can translate projections into actionable plans.

I argue for a more considered and critical approach to these tools, with a view to achieving better ways of balancing the tension between agility of preparedness plans and keeping in sight the complexity of high consequence events, like pandemics.