Information content of contact-pattern representations and predictability of epidemic outbreaks.

ABSTRACT: To understand the contact patterns of a population--who is in contact with whom, and when the contacts happen--is crucial for modeling outbreaks of infectious disease. Traditional theoretical epidemiology assumes that any individual can meet any with equal probability. A more modern approach, network epidemiology, assumes people are connected into a static network over which the disease spreads. Newer yet, temporal network epidemiology, includes the time in the contact representations. In this paper, we investigate the effect of these successive inclusions of more information. Using empirical proximity data, we study both outbreak sizes from unknown sources, and from known states of ongoing outbreaks. In the first case, there are large differences going from a fully mixed simulation to a n

SUBMITTER: Holme P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4585889 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature