Cost-benefit analysis of air filters in UK schools

This project won the "Novel research (quantitative)" prize on our Pandemics (Sept 2024) course. The text below is an excerpt from the final project.

Executive summary

Purpose and scope:

This project aims to improve biosecurity by evaluating the cost-effectiveness of air filters to reduce pathogen transmission in public buildings. Public buildings such as schools, workplaces and hospitals are high-risk environments where 50% of pathogen transmission occurs. Reducing this transmission by improving air quality can increase society's resilience to pandemics and airborne bioweapons. Air filters, improved ventilation and germicidal UV can improve indoor air quality. This analysis focuses on air filters in the context of UK schools, as there is a significant amount of recent evidence, and they are more rapidly scalable than other technologies.

Full project

You can view the full project here.