Stochastic Models of Emerging Infectious Disease Transmission on Adaptive Random Networks

Abstract

We presented adaptive random network models to describe human behavioral change during epidemics and performed stochastic simulations of SIR (susceptible-infectious-recovered) epidemic models on adaptive random networks. The interplay between infectious disease dynamics and network adaptation dynamics was investigated in regard to the disease transmission and the cumulative number of infection cases. We found that the cumulative case was reduced and associated with an increasing network adaptation probability but was increased with an increasing disease transmission probability. It was found that the topological changes of the adaptive random networks were able to reduce the cumulative number of infections and also to delay the epidemic peak. Our results also suggest the existence of a critical value for the ratio of disease transmission and adaptation probabilities below which the epidemic cannot occur.