An influenza epidemic model with dynamic social networks of agents with individual behaviour

Abstract

There is an interplay between the spread of infectious disease and the behaviour of individuals that can be modelled through a series of interconnected dynamical feedback blocks. Specifically, the outbreak of an infectious disease can trigger behavioural responses, at the group and individual levels, which in turn influences the epidemic evolution. Daily life interactions can be modelled through adaptive co-evolutionary networks whose nodes represent the interconnected individuals. In this paper we introduce an individual-based model where the behaviour of each agent is determined by both external stimuli and perception of its environment. It is built as a combination of three interacting blocks that model the fundamental aspects of an epidemic: i) individual behaviour, ii) social behaviour and iii) health state.