Mathematical models of human mobility of relevance to malaria transmission in Africa.

ABSTRACT: As Africa-wide malaria prevalence declines, an understanding of human movement patterns is essential to inform how best to target interventions. We fitted movement models to trip data from surveys conducted at 3-5 sites throughout each of Mali, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Tanzania. Two models were compared in terms of their ability to predict the observed movement patterns - a gravity model, in which movement rates between pairs of locations increase with population size and decrease with distance, and a radiation model, in which travelers are cumulatively "absorbed" as they move outwards from their origin of travel. The gravity model provided a better fit to the data overall and for travel to large populations, while the radiation model provided a better fit for nearby populations. One stren

SUBMITTER: Marshall JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5955928 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature