No Arabic abstract
The study proposes a modeling framework for investigating the disease dynamics with adaptive human behavior during a disease outbreak, considering the impacts of both local observations and global information. One important application scenario is that commuters may adjust their behavior upon observing the symptoms and countermeasures from their physical contacts during travel, thus altering the trajectories of a disease outbreak. We introduce the heterogeneous mean-field (HMF) approach in a multiplex network setting to jointly model the spreading dynamics of the infectious disease in the contact network and the dissemination dynamics of information in the observation network. The disease spreading is captured using the classic susceptible-infectious-susceptible (SIS) process, while an SIS-alike process models the spread of awareness termed as unaware-aware-unaware (UAU). And the use of multiplex network helps capture the interplay between disease spreading and information dissemination, and how the dynamics of one may affect the other. Theoretical analyses suggest that there are three potential equilibrium states, depending on the percolation strength of diseases and information. The dissemination of information may help shape herd immunity among the population, thus suppressing and eradicating the disease outbreak. Finally, numerical experiments using the contact networks among metro travelers are provided to shed light on the disease and information dynamics in the real-world scenarios and gain insights on the resilience of transportation system against the risk of infectious diseases.
There is currently growing interest in modeling the information diffusion on social networks across multi-disciplines. The majority of the corresponding research has focused on information diffusion independently, ignoring the network evolution in the diffusion process. Therefore, it is more reasonable to describe the real diffusion systems by the co-evolution between network topologies and information states. In this work, we propose a mechanism considering the coevolution between information states and network topology simultaneously, in which the information diffusion was executed as an SIS process and network topology evolved based on the adaptive assumption. The theoretical analyses based on the Markov approach were very consistent with simulation. Both simulation results and theoretical analyses indicated that the adaptive process, in which informed individuals would rewire the links between the informed neighbors to a random non-neighbor node, can enhance information diffusion (leading to much broader spreading). In addition, we obtained that two threshold values exist for the information diffusion on adaptive networks, i.e., if the information propagation probability is less than the first threshold, information cannot diffuse and dies out immediately; if the propagation probability is between the first and second threshold, information will spread to a finite range and die out gradually; and if the propagation probability is larger than the second threshold, information will diffuse to a certain size of population in the network. These results may shed some light on understanding the co-evolution between information diffusion and network topology.
Although there is always an interplay between the dynamics of information diffusion and disease spreading, the empirical research on the systemic coevolution mechanisms connecting these two spreading dynamics is still lacking. Here we investigate the coevolution mechanisms and dynamics between information and disease spreading by utilizing real data and a proposed spreading model on multiplex network. Our empirical analysis finds asymmetrical interactions between the information and disease spreading dynamics. Our results obtained from both the theoretical framework and extensive stochastic numerical simulations suggest that an information outbreak can be triggered in a communication network by its own spreading dynamics or by a disease outbreak on a contact network, but that the disease threshold is not affected by information spreading. Our key finding is that there is an optimal information transmission rate that markedly suppresses the disease spreading. We find that the time evolution of the dynamics in the proposed model qualitatively agrees with the real-world spreading processes at the optimal information transmission rate.
The recurrent infectious diseases and their increasing impact on the society has promoted the study of strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading. In this review we outline the applications of percolation theory to describe strategies against epidemic spreading on complex networks. We give a general outlook of the relation between link percolation and the susceptible-infected-recovered model, and introduce the node void percolation process to describe the dilution of the network composed by healthy individual, $i.e$, the network that sustain the functionality of a society. Then, we survey two strategies: the quenched disorder strategy where an heterogeneous distribution of contact intensities is induced in society, and the intermittent social distancing strategy where health individuals are persuaded to avoid contact with their neighbors for intermittent periods of time. Using percolation tools, we show that both strategies may halt the epidemic spreading. Finally, we discuss the role of the transmissibility, $i.e$, the effective probability to transmit a disease, on the performance of the strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading.
Motivated by the importance of individual differences in risk perception and behavior change in peoples responses to infectious disease outbreaks (particularly the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic), we propose a heterogeneous Disease-Behavior-Information (hDBI) transmission model, in which peoples risk of getting infected is influenced by information diffusion, behavior change, and disease transmission. We use both a mean-field approximation and Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the dynamics of the model. Information diffusion influences behavior change by allowing people to be aware of the disease and adopt self-protection, and subsequently affects disease transmission by changing the actual infection rate. Results show that (a) awareness plays a central role in epidemic prevention; (b) a reasonable fraction of over-reacting nodes are needed in epidemic prevention; (c) R0 has different effects on epidemic outbreak for cases with and without asymptomatic infection; (d) social influence on behavior change can remarkably decrease the epidemic outbreak size. This research indicates that the media and opinion leaders should not understate the transmissibility and severity of diseases to ensure that people could become aware of the disease and adopt self-protection to protect themselves and the whole population.
The frequent emergence of diseases with the potential to become threats at local and global scales, such as influenza A(H1N1), SARS, MERS, and recently COVID-19 disease, makes it crucial to keep designing models of disease propagation and strategies to prevent or mitigate their effects in populations. Since isolated systems are exceptionally rare to find in any context, especially in human contact networks, here we examine the susceptible-infected-recovered model of disease spreading in a multiplex network formed by two distinct networks or layers, interconnected through a fraction $q$ of shared individuals (overlap). We model the interactions through weighted networks, because person-to-person interactions are diverse (or disordered); weights represent the contact times of the interactions. Using branching theory supported by simulations, we analyze a social distancing strategy that reduces the average contact time in both layers, where the intensity of the distancing is related to the topology of the layers. We find that the critical values of the distancing intensities, above which an epidemic can be prevented, increase with the overlap $q$. Also we study the effect of the social distancing on the mutual giant component of susceptible individuals, which is crucial to keep the functionality of the system. In addition, we find that for relatively small values of the overlap $q$, social distancing policies might not be needed at all to maintain the functionality of the system.