Relevance of transportation to correlations among criticality, physical means of propagation, and distribution of dengue fever cases in the state of Bahia

Abstract

Dengue infection is a public health problem with a complex distribution. The physical means of propagation and the dynamics of diffusion of the disease between municipalities need to be analysed to direct efficient public policies to prevent dengue infection. The present study presents correlations of occurrences of reported cases of dengue infection among municipalities, self-organized criticality (SOC), and transportation between areas, identifying the municipalities that play an important role in the diffusion of dengue across the state of Bahia, Brazil. The significant correlation found between the correlation network and the SOC demonstrates that the pattern of intramunicipal diffusion of dengue is coupled to the pattern of synchronisation between the municipalities. Transportation emerges as influential in the dynamics of diffusion of epidemics by acting on the aforementioned variables.

Keywords: Computational model; Correlation network; Dengue; Epidemic disease.