Epidemics in Interconnected Small-World Networks

Meng Liu, Daqing Li, Pengju Qin, Chaoran Liu, Huijuan Wang and Feilong Wang

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-9

Abstract: Networks can be used to describe the interconnections among individuals, which play an important role in the spread of disease. Although the small-world effect has been found to have a significant impact on epidemics in single networks, the small-world effect on epidemics in interconnected networks has rarely been considered. Here, we study the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model of epidemic spreading in a system comprising two interconnected small-world networks. We find that the epidemic threshold in such networks decreases when the rewiring probability of the component small-world networks increases. When the infection rate is low, the rewiring probability affects the global steady-state infection density, whereas when the infection rate is high, the infection density is insensitive to the rewiring probability. Moreover, epidemics in interconnected small-world networks are found to spread at different velocities that depend on the rewiring probability.

Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0120701

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120701

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