Impact of travel patterns on epidemic dynamics in heterogeneous spatial metapopulation networks

We report the results of a series of simulations of a susceptible-infected-recovered epidemic model in heterogeneous spatial metapopulation networks with quantitative knowledge of human traveling statistics that human travel behavior obeys scaling laws in the sense of geographical distance and period of waiting time. By tuning the edge length distribution of the spatial metapopulation network, we can conveniently control the distribution of human travel distance. The simulation results show that the occurrence probability of global outbreaks is significantly dependent on the characteristic travel distance, the characteristic waiting time, and the memory effects of human travel. We also present some preliminary results on the effects of travel restrictions in epidemic control.