Pandemic Preparedness With Pervasive Computing

The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated pervasive computing research and development resulting in new, impactful public health tools, including digital contact tracing, crowd dynamics analysis, and symptom tracking, which are broadly recognized by the public and expert groups alike. In the post-COVID age, focus has shifted to establish a level of pandemic preparedness. Across all preparedness measures, there is the need for interoperable data, pervasive computing tools, and data analysis methods. Considering the open technical challenges, further pervasive computing research is a key to fill the opportunity created over the last years and eventually save more lives at global scale. In this special issue, we capture new technical approaches to the pervasive tool inventory that help dealing with a pandemic situation, but also investigations that highlight opportunities for further research. We aim to motivate continued research and discussion of new ideas on pervasive computing for public health tools that spurs pandemic preparedness.