PANDHUB will create an integrated toolbox to aid transport operators and relevant actors in major transport hubs in the development of their current pandemic and dangerous pathogen preparedness and response plans. The project is intended to cover the extraordinary aspects specific to serious natural or man-made pathogen threats in the transport environment by providing accurate, reliable and validated information for the incident threat assessment, preparedness and response phases.

The toolbox will include modelling components to simulate the spread of diseases and to evaluate the effects of countermeasures. The impact of these contact tracing and epidemiology tools will be the facilitation of an efficient and rapid response to a cross-border incident, thereby supporting the capability to limit spread and save lives. Co-ordinated and appropriate data collection, collation and analysis tools developed here, will allow swift ‘joined-up’ epidemiological investigation of a developing situation in order to integrate with, and inform, other technologies and expertise. The capability provided here will largely be achieved through early and close collaboration with transport staff and end-users, and borne out of review and integration of the local and national practical, legal and ethical implications necessarily involved when an incident and its response is multinational.

The developed tools will be widely tested through workshops and field exercises. The feedback from these experiments will be used for validation and further development of the tools.