Measuring the potential of individual airports for pandemic spread over the world airline network.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Massive growth in human mobility has dramatically increased the risk and rate of pandemic spread. Macro-level descriptors of the topology of the World Airline Network (WAN) explains middle and late stage dynamics of pandemic spread mediated by this network, but necessarily regard early stage variation as stochastic. We propose that much of this early stage variation can be explained by appropriately characterizing the local network topology surrounding an outbreak's debut location.

Methods

Based on a model of the WAN derived from public data, we measure for each airport the expected force of infection (AEF) which a pandemic originating at that airport would generate, assuming an epidemic process which transmits from airport to airport via scheduled commercial flig

SUBMITTER: Lawyer G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4746766 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature