CRITICAL BEHAVIOR IN CELLULAR AUTOMATA ANIMAL DISEASE TRANSMISSION MODEL

P. D. Morley () and Julius Chang ()
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P. D. Morley: General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, National Systems Group, 14700 Lee Road Chantilly, VA 20151, USA
Julius Chang: Strategic Analysis Inc., 3601 Wilson Blvd, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22201, USA

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2004, vol. 15, issue 01, 149-162

Abstract: Using cellular automata model, we simulate the British Government Policy (BGP) in the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in Great Britain. When clinical symptoms of the disease appeared in a farm, there is mandatory slaughter (culling) of all livestock in an infected premise (IP). Those farms in the neighboring of an IP (contiguous premise, CP), are also culled, aka nearest neighbor interaction. Farms where the disease may be prevalent from animal, human, vehicle or airborne transmission (dangerous contact, DC), are additionally culled, aka next-to-nearest neighbor interactions and lightning factor. The resulting mathematical model possesses a phase transition, whereupon if the physical disease transmission kernel exceeds a critical value, catastrophic loss of animals ensues. The nonlocal disease transport probability can be as low as 0.01% per day and the disease can still be in the high mortality phase. We show that the fundamental equation for sustainable disease transport is the criticality equation for neutron fission cascade. Finally, we calculate that the percentage of culled animals that are actually healthy is ≈30%.

Keywords: Phase transition; critical behavior; cellular automata; animal disease transmission model; foot and mouth disease (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1142/S0129183104005589

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