Impact of edge-removal on the centrality betweenness of the best spreaders

TL;DR

This paper investigates how removing certain airline connections affects the ability of infectious diseases to spread, revealing that targeting less busy routes can be more effective and cost-efficient than focusing on major hubs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of edge-removal strategies on airline networks, highlighting the effectiveness of controlling disease spread by removing less popular connections.

Findings

Removing less busy connections can significantly hinder disease spread.

Targeting minor routes can be more cost-effective than major hubs.

The approach predicts the economic and social costs of different control strategies.

Abstract

The control of epidemic spreading is essential to avoid potential fatal consequences and also, to lessen unforeseen socio-economic impact. The need for effective control is exemplified during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which has inflicted near to a thousand deaths as well as bankruptcies of airlines and related businesses. In this article, we examine the efficacy of control strategies on the propagation of infectious diseases based on removing connections within real world airline network with the associated economic and social costs taken into account through defining appropriate quantitative measures. We uncover the surprising results that removing less busy connections can be far more effective in hindering the spread of the disease than removing the more popular connections. Since disconnecting the less popular routes tend to incur less socio-economic cost, our finding suggests the possibility of trading minimal reduction in connectivity of an important hub with efficiencies in epidemic control. In particular, we demonstrate the performance of various local epidemic control strategies, and show how our approach can predict their cost effectiveness through the spreading control characteristics.