Šikić, M., Lančić, A., Antulov-Fantulin, N. et al. Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 440. doi:10.1140/epjb/e2013-31025-5
Abstract:
In the study of disease spreading on empirical complex networks in SIR model, initially infected
nodes can be ranked according to some measure of their epidemic impact. The highest ranked nodes, also
referred to as “superspreaders”, are associated to dominant epidemic risks and therefore deserve special
attention. In simulations on studied empirical complex networks, it is shown that the ranking depends
on the dynamical regime of the disease spreading. A possible mechanism leading to this dependence is
illustrated in an analytically tractable example. In systems where the allocation of resources to counter
disease spreading to individual nodes is based on their ranking, the dynamical regime of disease spreading
is frequently not known before the outbreak of the disease. Therefore, we introduce a quantity called
epidemic centrality as an average over all relevant regimes of disease spreading as a basis of the ranking.
A recently introduced concept of phase diagram of epidemic spreading is used as a framework in which
several types of averaging are studied. The epidemic centrality is compared to structural properties of
nodes such as node degree, k-cores and betweenness. There is a growing trend of epidemic centrality with
degree and k-cores values, but the variation of epidemic centrality is much smaller than the variation of
degree or k-cores value. It is found that the epidemic centrality of the structurally peripheral nodes is of
the same order of magnitude as the epidemic centrality of the structurally central nodes. The implications
of these findings for the distributions of resources to counter disease spreading are discussed.
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Funding Info:
The work of M.ˇS. is financed by Biomedical Research Council of A*STAR and A*STAR Joint Council Office (Grant 12302EG016), Singapore and by Ministry of Education Science and Sports of the Republic of Croatia under Contract Nos. 036-0362214-1987 and 098-1191344-2860. The work of H.ˇS. is supported by the Ministry of Education Science and Sports of the Republic of Croatia under Contract No. 098-0352828-2863.