Document Type
Article
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
Computer Sciences, Infectious diseases, Epidemiology
Abstract
In understanding the dynamics of the spread of an infectious disease, it is important to understand how a town’s place in a network of towns within a region will impact how the disease spreads to that town and from that town. In this article, we take a model for the spread of an infectious disease in a single town and scale it up to simulate a region containing multiple towns. The model is validated by looking at how adding additional towns and commuters influences the outbreak in a single town. We then look at how the centrality of a town within a network influences the outbreak. Our main finding is that the commuters coming into a town have a greater effect on whether an outbreak will spread to a town than the commuters going out. The findings on centrality of a town and how it influences an outbreak could potentially be used to help influence future policy and intervention strategies such as school closure policies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093119
Recommended Citation
Hunter, E.; Mac Namee, B.; Kelleher, J.D. (2020). A Model for the Spread of Infectious Diseases in a Region. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health17, 3119. doi:10.3390/ijerph17093119
Funder
ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology
Publication Details
Special Issue "Infectious Disease Modeling in the Era of Complex Data" in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health