Spatial extent of an outbreak in animal epidemics

TL;DR

This paper models the spatial spread of animal epidemics at outbreak using stochastic processes and convex hull analysis, deriving exact equations for the expected spatial extent and validating with simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical approach to quantify the spatial extent of epidemics using convex hull metrics in a stochastic SIR framework.

Findings

Derived exact evolution equations for mean perimeter and area of convex hulls.

Validated analytical results with Monte Carlo simulations.

Provides a new method for early epidemic spatial assessment.

Abstract

Characterizing the spatial extent of epidemics at the outbreak stage is key to controlling the evolution of the disease. At the outbreak, the number of infected individuals is typically small, so that fluctuations around their average are important: then, it is commonly assumed that the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) mechanism can be described by a stochastic birth-death process of Galton-Watson type. The displacements of the infected individuals can be modelled by resorting to Brownian motion, which is applicable when long-range movements and complex network interactions can be safely neglected, as in case of animal epidemics. In this context, the spatial extent of an epidemic can be assessed by computing the convex hull enclosing the infected individuals at a given time. We derive the exact evolution equations for the mean perimeter and the mean area of the convex hull, and compare them with Monte Carlo simulations.