Document Type

Article

Rights

This item is available under a Creative Commons License for non-commercial use only

Disciplines

Computer Sciences, Infectious diseases, Epidemiology

Publication Details

Special Issue "Infectious Disease Modeling in the Era of Complex Data" in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

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

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