Epidemic spreading in communities with mobile agents

Jie Zhou and Zonghua Liu

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2009, vol. 388, issue 7, 1228-1236

Abstract: We propose a model of mobile agents to study the epidemic spreading in communities with different densities of agents, which aims to simulate the realistic situation of multiple cities. The model addresses the epidemic process from a community with threshold λc1 less than the infection rate λ to a community with threshold λc2 larger than λ through both direct and indirect contacts. By both theoretic analysis and numerical simulations we show that it is possible to sustain the epidemic spreading in the community with λc2 through contact with another community, provided that the latter is connected with an infected community. This result suggests that for effectively controlling the epidemic spread, we should also pay attention to the risk caused by the infection through indirect contact.

Keywords: Social networks; Mobile agents; Epidemic spreading; Random walk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:388:y:2009:i:7:p:1228-1236

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2008.12.014

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