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A Liverpool tech firm has worked with the Government to create a "pattern of life", Sim City-style mathematical modelling system to better predict the spread of Covid-19.

CGA Simulation has set up technologies hoping to help communities get back to normal following the pandemic after winning Government competition Innovate º£½ÇÊÓƵ.

Baltic Triangle-based CGA mathematically models how Covid-19 spreads in local communities using ‘Agent Based Modelling’ (ABM), which focuses on how the virus is transmitted from person to person, in a small town - based on Southport - as people go about their daily business.

The team, which creates games for PC, mobile and more recently Nintendo Switch, designed a virtual ‘digital twin’ copy of the town, in which to model community spread of Covid-19, based on simulated interactions between humans, their vehicles and frequently visited buildings and focal points.

This town hub will be used to analyse people’s interactions and likelihood of transmitting the disease as they travel between school, the hairdressers, a bar or church.

Jon Wetherall, MD of CGA Simulation, and simulation modelling expert, said: “Our technology acknowledges that each person in a community has a different commute to work, school or the gym, different friends and hobbies.

"Each ‘person’ we model in our digital world makes independent decisions about where they go and what their daily activities are, giving a more realistic view of how people’s movements around a town or a city can impact on disease spread.”

ABM differs to that being used by most academic epidemiology researchers, as it assumes each ‘thing’ being modelled has its own ‘agency’, or freewill - to interact independently with the world around it.