The novel coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, has undoubtedly and most unfortunately grown to be one of the worst global pandemic in recent history. As of April 7, 2020, there were more than 1.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world and more than 86,000 deaths, touching every continuent save Antarctica. Singapore has also been hit relatively hard by the virus.
Indeed, the threat of COVID-19 is very real and is only growing. The world has to comprehend this threat and it is by understanding the situation better that we may hopefully win the battle against the pandemic sooner rather than later. However, the need to understand how to tackle the virus is not necessarily exclusive to healthcare experts or servicemen. Everyone has to play their part in taking the right actions in order to help curb the spread of the virus. It may be as simple as sanitising your hands frequently, to keeping up to date with the latest news on a country’s preventive measures. If any one individual fails to understand and carry out the right actions, the risk of spreading the virus is compounded and if one individual becomes many, said risk will no doubt grow exponentially.
Our project team is dedicated in equipping the general public with the relevant knowledge they should know in order to best protect themselves and those around them against the spread of the virus. As such, we have come up with a solution to help disseminate information on COVID-19 as simply and conveniently as possible. In fact, we have taken the term ‘knowledge’ quite literally by introducing artificial intelligence aided systems in our solution.
First and foremost, our solution will take advantage of the cognitive system capabilities found in a chatbot. We will be making use of the natural language processing provided by Google’s Diaglogflow service and deploying it on Telegram, one of the most popular and widely used messaging platforms. These will help us to reach out to a vast majority of the general public. Secondly, we apply machine reasoning to acquire and prepare our knowledge base of information related to COVID-19. Further to that, we have made use of machine inference in the form of rules so that users can ask questions and be provided with the relevant answers and knowledge that they need. Last but certainly not least, our solution is also a reasoning system as we understand that each user’s needs are unique. As such, we are able to search for answers that best suit the user’s specific needs, such as providing the user with an optimal answer relative to his/her location.
Our project team hopes that with our solution, the general public will be able to receive updated knowledge through a method that is easy to use, accessible, understandable and personalised. It is only through the efforts of every single individual in doing their part in fighting COVID-19 that we may stop this pandemic. If our solution could play a small role in doing that, then it would already be a humble success in our books.
| Official Full Name | Student ID (MTech Applicable) | Work Items (Who Did What) | Email (Optional) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lim Wee Kiat | A0213481M | Project idea generation; Dialogflow – intents implementation & testing, entity creation, contexts & parameter design for feedback; Django webhook – Telegram integration, Telegram message & dialog UX design, Django database design & setup, infection statistic, infection trend plots, A* search for route & google API integration, feedback card, subscription & announcement; Heroku host & Cronjob Scheduler; Debug & troubleshooting; Graphic design & project report template design & writing | weekiat.lim7@gmail.com |
| Eu Jin Marcus Yatim | A0124453M | Project idea generation; Dialogflow – intent implementation & testing, layout and flow of responses; User and Deployment manual writing; Project report writing | marcusyatim@gmail.com |
| Teoh Yee Seng | A0213501B | Project idea generation; Dialogflow – intent implementation & testing (diagnosis and checkin intent), entity & parameter setting; Django webhook – Code refactoring into OOP style with inheritance, diagnosis decision table, auto checking notification using multiprocessing, user database management; Debug & troubleshooting; Project report writing | tyseng1102@gmail.com |
Refer to appendix <Installation & User Guide> in Github Folder: ProjectReport
Note that due to long pages, it is not appended into Appendix of ProjectReport. The team felt it will be more organized and clear if it treated as a separate document.
Refer to project report at Github Folder: ProjectReport
Table of Content for Project Report / Paper:
- 1 Executive Summary
- 2 Business Justification
- 3 Project Team
- 4 Project Solution
- 5 Project Architecture & Implementation
- 6 Project Performance & Validation
- 7 Challenge & Recommendation
- APPENDIX OF REPORT A: Project Proposal
- APPENDIX OF REPORT B: Mapped System Functionalities against knowledge, techniques and skills of modular courses
- APPENDIX OF REPORT C: Instalation and User Guide (see separate document)
- APPENDIX OF REPORT D: List of Intents
- APPENDIX OF REPORT E: Individual Reports
- APPENDIX OF REPORT F: Abbreviations & References
Refer to Github Folder: Miscellaneous
- List of information references that the team uses in their work
- Exported zip file for Dialogflow Agent for COVID-19 Chatbot. Refer to Installation & User Guide for deployment.