Dynamical Interplay between Awareness and Epidemic Spreading in Multiplex Networks

We present the analysis of the interrelation between two processes accounting for the spreading of an epidemic, and the information awareness to prevent its infection, on top of multiplex networks. This scenario is representative of an epidemic process spreading on a network of persistent real conta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters Vol. 111; no. 12; p. 128701
Main Authors: Granell, Clara, Gómez, Sergio, Arenas, Alex
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 17.09.2013
Subjects:
Epidemics
Epidemiologic Methods
Humans
Infection - epidemiology
Information Dissemination
Markov Chains
Models, Biological
Models, Statistical
ISSN:0031-9007, 1079-7114, 1079-7114
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We present the analysis of the interrelation between two processes accounting for the spreading of an epidemic, and the information awareness to prevent its infection, on top of multiplex networks. This scenario is representative of an epidemic process spreading on a network of persistent real contacts, and a cyclic information awareness process diffusing in the network of virtual social contacts between the same individuals. The topology corresponds to a multiplex network where two diffusive processes are interacting affecting each other. The analysis using a microscopic Markov chain approach reveals the phase diagram of the incidence of the epidemics and allows us to capture the evolution of the epidemic threshold depending on the topological structure of the multiplex and the interrelation with the awareness process. Interestingly, the critical point for the onset of the epidemics has a critical value (metacritical point) defined by the awareness dynamics and the topology of the virtual network, from which the onset increases and the epidemics incidence decreases.
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ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.128701