The COVID-19 Activity Tracker (CAT) platform can be used by government and industry organisations to make economic recovery decisions based onforecast estimates.
The “Big Data for Smart Society” – GATE Institute, created the first-of-its-kind platform (COVID-19 Activity Tracker – CAT), which processes and presents empirical information about individual industries and the economy as a whole, based on constraints, imposed on the human factor.
This is performed in a way that allows stakeholders to decide on their own or on joint post-crisis recovery actions.
The CAT platform is developed by an interdisciplinary team headed by the Director of GATE Institute Prof. Silvia Ilieva and including some of the best economic analysts in Bulgaria – Assoc. Prof. Dr. Krasen Stanchev from Sofia University, Department of Public Administration, Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Market Economics (IME), GATE CAT Development Manager; Dr. Krassimir Lakov (analyst and economist); Dr. Evgeni Raykov from the University of National and World Economy (UNWE), Department of Finance (analyst); researcher Dimitar Chobanov (analyst), Institute of Economics and Policy at the University of National and World Economy; and Dr. Valentin Pavlov, Head of Technical Implementation at GATE.
“As an institute with the main mission to provide solutions based on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, we have built a platform to process and present empirical public information from various institutional organisations. On this basis, our team of economic analysts provide forecast assessments by industry, which in turn can help the decision-making of government and businesses being aware of the current situation and in the long run”, explained Prof. Silvia Ilieva, Director of GATE . “Our goal is to create a tool for stakeholders by providing information with assessments that would help them take certain steps for investment and recovery after the economic crisis.”
The methodology is classical and represents an interface between micro- and macroeconomic indicators, including fiscal ones, based on employment and added value, and modified to work for the current and atypical picture, resulting from blocked human activities.
Quantitative information are parameters of economic development for (at least) a year before the pandemic; the starting indicators for tracking the dynamics are derived from them. Qualitative data is the assessment of reference data, and the current forecast will depend on changes in statistics on what is happening in a given industry and in politics and economy, in general.
“Thanks to the information gathered, we can provide assessments and forecasts for market behaviour and development. Based on this perspective, the government and individual businesses will have a forward-looking and a long-term picture that can help them make decisions by industries and incomes, including at macro level for some industries, and on the basis of verifiable expectations for economic recovery. The advantage of the platform and evaluations is the empirical basis of monitoring and analysis. The latter provide information and an opportunity for timely updating of the data, which is announced by institutions, government and/or guilds and think-tanks “, adds Dr. Krasen Stanchev.
More about the platform COVID-19 Activity Tracker`