Epidemics in structured populations
The resilience to contagion processes is not just dictated by the structure of the population , but also by the constrained nature of the traffic and mobility flows connecting different subpopulations. For instance, travel fluxes are found to be characterized by very large-scale fluctuations with fluxes spanning several orders of magnitude. It has been shown that the invasion threshold(for a global spread by an infected agent) depends both on the mobility coefficients across populations and network properties. However, it is far from clear how these properties are altered across more realistic multiscale models. Similarly, there are no studies optimal control measures that rely on the restriction or alteration of mobility flows. We aim at studying
- The resilience of the population to contagion processes in realistic mobility networks.
- Implement stochastic coarse-grained branching process analysis to find general results on invasion thresholds.
- Find optimal mobility control strategies or network restructuring, which lower (or alternatively) enhance spread across subpopulations.