Disease dynamics in a dynamic social network

Claire Christensen, István Albert, Bryan Grenfell and Réka Albert

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2010, vol. 389, issue 13, 2663-2674

Abstract: We develop a framework for simulating a realistic, evolving social network (a city) into which a disease is introduced. We compare our results to prevaccine era measles data for England and Wales, and find that they capture the quantitative and qualitative features of epidemics in populations spanning two orders of magnitude. Our results provide unique insight into how and why the social topology of the contact network influences the propagation of the disease through the population. We argue that network simulation is suitable for concurrently probing contact network dynamics and disease dynamics in ways that prior modeling approaches cannot and it can be extended to the study of less well-documented diseases.

Keywords: Social network; Contact network; Network dynamics; Disease spreading; Disease dynamics; Measles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:13:p:2663-2674

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.034

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