Epidemics in interconnected small-world networks

Epidemics in interconnected small-world networks

Liu, M.
Li, D.
Qin, P.
Liu, C.
Wang, H.
Wang, F.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Intelligent Systems

2015-03-23

Networks can be used to describe the interconnections among individuals, which play an important role in the spread of disease. Although the small-world effect has been found to have a significant impact on epidemics in single networks, the small-world effect on epidemics in interconnected networks has rarely been considered. Here, we study the susceptibleinfected-susceptible (SIS) model of epidemic spreading in a system comprising two interconnected small-world networks. We find that the epidemic threshold in such networks decreases when the rewiring probability of the component small-world networks increases. When the infection rate is low, the rewiring probability affects the global steady-state infection density, whereas when the infection rate is high, the infection density is insensitive to the rewiring probability. Moreover, epidemics in interconnected small-world networks are found to spread at different velocities that depend on the rewiring probability.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:969fbfe8-ad32-4e19-be6c-6f09641ae226

Public Library of Science PLOS

1932-6203

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120701

PloS One, 10 (3), 2015

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2015 Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.