Modeling workplace contact networks: The effects of organizational structure, architecture, and reporting errors on epidemic predictions.

ABSTRACT: Face-to-face social contacts are potentially important transmission routes for acute respiratory infections, and understanding the contact network can improve our ability to predict, contain, and control epidemics. Although workplaces are important settings for infectious disease transmission, few studies have collected workplace contact data and estimated workplace contact networks. We use contact diaries, architectural distance measures, and institutional structures to estimate social contact networks within a Swiss research institute. Some contact reports were inconsistent, indicating reporting errors. We adjust for this with a latent variable model, jointly estimating the true (unobserved) network of contacts and duration-specific reporting probabilities. We find that contact probabili

SUBMITTER: Potter GE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4663701 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature