Assessment 3 Report: Wicked problem
Your Task
• This assessment is to be done individually.
• Students are to write a 2,000-word report in response to a “wicked problem” brief using
Systems Thinking & Complexity Science principles and submit it as a Microsoft word file via the TurnItIn portal at the end of week 9.
• You will receive marks for content, appropriate structure and referencing.
Assessment Description
In this assessment, you will be writing an individual report that encourages you to be creative with business analytics, whilst also developing a response to brief containing a “wicked problem”, to be addressed using Systems Thinking & Complexity Science principles.
Assessment Instructions
This assessment is set in the year 2022. Your brief is to contain spread of a new type of coronavirus in Australia that has emerged in 2022, known as Covid-22. Person Zero is identified in the United Kingdom.
There is no known vaccine available to immediately curb the spread of this virus. Fortunately Covid-22 has a rate of infection similar to Covid-19 when it first arose, rather than the more highly transmissible later variants of Covid-19.
Problem
The transmission of COVID-22 has occurred through air travel, before being formally identified. It reached Australia within weeks of Peron Zero’s infection.
As was the case when Covid-19 first emerged, there is once again an
• absence of centralised policy and timeline combined with
• the complex dynamics of human mobility and …
• the variable intensity of local outbreaks
There is an immediate fear of a devastating impact, with loss of lives and of livelihood.
As an analytics professional, you are tasked with using data on Covid-19 and the spread of other infectious diseases to suggest a path of action moving forward and outline this in a report.
Firstly, you need to identify the nature and scope of the problem that you are trying to solve, then utilising available historical data. In the first instance, access data using the URL below.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
You are also encouraged to research other publically available data bases; for example, data publically available from World Health Organisation (WHO) and John Hopkins University (JHU). Students speaking a language in addition to English, may also find other data sources e.g. Chinese speaking students may be able to access data from the Chinese government.
In defining your “wicked problem”, some dimensions for consideration include:
– Should directives to shelter at home and temporarily close non-essential businesses and schools be made at the State level?
– How can we deal with the varying intensities of the outbreak around the country, with some States having many infections and others remaining in the early stages of the epidemic?
– What do we know about the effectiveness of lockdowns and social distancing policies in
Australia?
– Are mobility patterns likely to be strongly correlated with COVID-22 case growth rates?
Examples of potential areas for investigation include:
1. What is the effect of changes in mobility patterns, given these changes are not likely to be perceptible for 9–12 days, and potentially for up to 3 weeks. This is consistent with the
incubation time of COVID-19.
2. Which behavioural changes are already underway in households, when individuals are anticipating public health directives with social distancing?
In developing your answer:
• What are some proxy datasets you could access to reflect mobility?
• Are there datasets in other categories, besides mobility, that can help you understand your “wicked problem” better?
• Note than Google Mobility tracks a total of 6 measures of activity:
o Retail & Recreation.
o Grocery & Pharmaceuticals.
o Parks & Nature.
o (Mass) Transit.
o Workplaces (offices and on-site).
o Residential & Home-based Activities.
Consider examining a selection of these measures and comment broadly on trends across activity types and across geographical regions, in response to Covid-19 and now Covid-22. In so doing, apply Analytics techniques using infographics software (preferably Power BI, Tableau, Spotfire,
RapidMiner or Neo4j).
