A network-based meta-population approach to model Rift Valley fever epidemics

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Publication:1784820

DOI10.1016/J.JTBI.2012.04.029zbMATH Open1397.92695arXiv1012.1684OpenAlexW2135172259WikidataQ40287896 ScholiaQ40287896MaRDI QIDQ1784820FDOQ1784820


Authors: Ling Xue, H. Morgan Scott, Lee W. Cohnstaedt, Caterina Scoglio Edit this on Wikidata


Publication date: 27 September 2018

Published in: Journal of Theoretical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) has been expanding its geographical distribution with important implications for both human and animal health. The emergence of Rift Valley fever (RVF) in the Middle East, and its continuing presence in many areas of Africa, has negatively impacted both medical and veterinary infrastructures and human health. Furthermore, worldwide attention should be directed towards the broader infection dynamics of RVFV. We propose a new compartmentalized model of RVF and the related ordinary differential equations to assess disease spread in both time and space; with the latter driven as a function of contact networks. The model is based on weighted contact networks, where nodes of the networks represent geographical regions and the weights represent the level of contact between regional pairings for each set of species. The inclusion of human, animal, and vector movements among regions is new to RVF modeling. The movement of the infected individuals is not only treated as a possibility, but also an actuality that can be incorporated into the model. We have tested, calibrated, and evaluated the model using data from the recent 2010 RVF outbreak in South Africa as a case study; mapping the epidemic spread within and among three South African provinces. An extensive set of simulation results shows the potential of the proposed approach for accurately modeling the RVF spreading process in additional regions of the world. The benefits of the proposed model are twofold: not only can the model differentiate the maximum number of infected individuals among different provinces, but also it can reproduce the different starting times of the outbreak in multiple locations. Finally, the exact value of the reproduction number is numerically computed and upper and lower bounds for the reproduction number are analytically derived in the case of homogeneous populations.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1684




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