Adapting a Physical Earthquake-Aftershock Model to Simulate the Spread of COVID-19

Thanushika Gunatilake () and Stephen A. Miller
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Thanushika Gunatilake: Center for Hydrogeology and Geothermics (CHYN), University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Stephen A. Miller: Center for Hydrogeology and Geothermics (CHYN), University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 24, 1-11

Abstract: There exists a need for a simple, deterministic, scalable, and accurate model that captures the dominant physics of pandemic propagation. We propose such a model by adapting a physical earthquake/aftershock model to COVID-19. The aftershock model revealed the physical basis for the statistical Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model as a highly non-linear diffusion process, thus permitting a grafting of the underlying physical equations into a formulation for calculating infection pressure propagation in a pandemic-type model. Our model shows that the COVID-19 pandemic propagates through an analogous porous media with hydraulic properties approximating beach sand and water. Model results show good correlations with reported cumulative infections for all cases studied. In alphabetical order, these include Austria, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Melbourne (AU), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. Importantly, the model is predominantly controlled by one parameter ( α ), which modulates the societal recovery from the spread of the virus. The obtained recovery times for the different pandemic waves vary considerably from country to country and are reflected in the temporal evolution of registered infections. These results provide an intuition-based approach to designing and implementing mitigation measures, with predictive capabilities for various mitigation scenarios.

Keywords: COVID-19; modelling pandemic; earthquake aftershock model; non-linear diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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