Dynamical network model of infective mobile agents

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2006 Sep;74(3 Pt 2):036110. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.74.036110. Epub 2006 Sep 21.

Abstract

A dynamical network (consisting of a time-evolving wiring of interactions among a group of random walkers) is introduced to model the spread of an infectious disease in a population of mobile individuals. We investigate the main properties of this model, and show that peculiar features arise when individuals are allowed to perform long-distance jumps. Such peculiarities are captured and conveniently quantified by a series of appropriate parameters able to highlight the structural differences emerging in the networks when long-distance jumps are combined with local random walk processes.