Since Prime Minister Mark Rutte addressed the nation on 12 March with a clear message to stay at home, public transport agencies were tasked with a unique set of challenges. During the ADS and ADMS webinar ‘COVID-19 and Capacity Modelling in Public Transport’, representatives from Netherlands Railways, or shortly NS, Dennis Huisman and Menno de Bruyn explained how the organisation used data science to adapt its services and predict its future.

It’s a somewhat awkward truth: the current global coronavirus pandemic is proving to be a boon for data scientists. Large amounts of data is streaming in from all over: not only hospital intensive care units (ICUs) but the private sector, too. As a result, data scientists have a lot of rich information to pump into their models – improving their ability to predict possible future scenarios that could help us better manage a possible second wave.

How do we trust all the data being generated by COVID-19? How can we apply this data to help formulate the best exit strategies from the current crisis? These were some of the questions posed at the first ADS & AMDS Webinar in a series that explores ‘The Power and Weakness of Data and Modelling in COVID-19’.