Modeling Dengue Outbreaks

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid dengue epidemic model combining individual-based human dynamics with compartmental mosquito populations, analyzing how different distributions and climates affect outbreak characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid modeling approach for dengue that links individual human simulations with mosquito compartmental models, demonstrating their equivalence under certain conditions.

Findings

Model results are insensitive to the distribution of the exposed period, given median alignment.

The timing of secondary cases is sensitive to the exposed period distribution.

The IBM model is shown to be equivalent to a compartmental model in this context.

Abstract

We introduce a dengue model (SEIR) where the human individuals are treated on an individual basis (IBM) while the mosquito population, produced by an independent model, is treated by compartments (SEI). We study the spread of epidemics by the sole action of the mosquito. Exponential, deterministic and experimental distributions for the (human) exposed period are considered in two weather scenarios, one corresponding to temperate climate and the other to tropical climate. Virus circulation, final epidemic size and duration of outbreaks are considered showing that the results present little sensitivity to the statistics followed by the exposed period provided the median of the distributions are in coincidence. Only the time between an introduced (imported) case and the appearance of the first symptomatic secondary case is sensitive to this distribution. We finally show that the IBM model introduced is precisely a realization of a compartmental model, and that at least in this case, the choice between compartmental models or IBM is only a matter of convenience.