Gianpaolo Scalia Tomba: Modelling disease spread

Abstract

When modelling disease spread in a population, a part of the model usually describes the population contacts that can transmit the disease. The earliest models assumed "homogeneous mixing", similar to gas molecules colliding with each other, but since then various attempts have been made to understand the effects of more structured and thus "more realistic" approaches to contact patterns. Some recent approaches are of the "agent based model" type, which use large amounts of demographic and other types of data, but these models essentially escape analytical understanding. Among recent model types that can be analytically approached, one finds the so called "configuration models", where spread occurs on a graph with prescribed degree distribution. Some results for this type of models and some considerations about their suitability as disease spread models will be presented.

The presentation is based on joint work with Tom Britton.