(L-R): Thomas Kallstenius, LIST; Minister Claude Meisch; Minister Franz Fayot; Credit: LIST

On Monday 3 August 2020, Luxembourg's Minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot, and the Minister for Higher Education and Research, Claude Meisch, visited Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) to attend an inspection and demonstration of the “Cross-Functional Dashboard”, in relation to the country’s COVID-19 data, which runs on the Institute’s Visual Wall (VisWall), a mosaic of 24 high-resolution 46-inch touch screens spanning seven metres.

The Ministers were joined on Monday by representatives from several organisations that supply and share data feeding into the dashboard; the University of Luxembourg’s Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and Luxinnovation.

After an initial welcome by the CEO of LIST, Thomas Kallstenius, the guests were shown presentations demonstrating what the collaboration between the organisations has managed to achieve up to the present time, in Luxembourg’s fight against COVID-19.

LISER’s social-economic model was demonstrated on the VisWall as well as data for infection, recovery and hospital occupation relating to COVID-19 infections.

Other perspectives of the dashboard were shown such as “Digital Twin.” This is part of the dashboard that can be connected to remote sensors located in buildings around the country, and send data back to the dashboard in real time.

As an example of real time data processing, live motorway traffic camera footage from around Luxembourg was shown on the VisWall and it was demonstrated how, by manipulating a map, it was possible to view and interact with the videos.

In these difficult times, resilience is key and a systemic crisis like COVID-19 has shown that being resilient is a multi-faceted challenge.

The Cross-Functional Dashboard is a step forward in the direction of providing a more comprehensive overview of a complex situation to decision-makers. It is also a strategic tool for researchers to build, improve and assess the models on which their recommendations to these decision-makers are based.

Composed of data from a multitude of specific areas, the Cross-Functional Dashboard provides an overview with which policy makers can rely on to manage the health crisis and therefore limit its economic and social consequences. This tool therefore testifies to the existing skills within the Luxembourg research community that allow us to rigorously combat the COVID-19 pandemic", said Minister Fayot following the visit.

There are still many further steps to take to include for instance more artificial intelligence in the system but the Cross-Functional Dashboard shows that, by joining their forces, Luxembourg institutions have the capacity to be at the forefront to further increase the resilience of the country.

This dashboard is one of the examples of the excellent collaboration between public research players, a collaboration that I can only encourage and which has enabled public research to effectively support the Government within the framework of the management of this health crisis,” said Minister Meisch.

Thomas Kallstenius concluded “It’s indeed important to emphasise the collaborative spirit of this effort by all the research and innovation actors in Luxembourg. Our joint ambition is to develop the integrated dashboard, and the data analytics engine behind it, to support the decision makers and policy makers during the COVID-19 pandemic but also to position Luxembourg as blueprint for a digital, sustainable and resilient economy in a post-COVID-19 crisis world”.