Concurrency measures in the era of temporal network epidemiology: A review

TL;DR

This review explores the evolution of concurrency in temporal network epidemiology, highlighting its significance in understanding disease spread, especially in sexually transmitted infections, and discusses new methodological approaches connecting concurrency to contact pattern models.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the development of concurrency concepts and reviews emerging methods linking concurrency measures to contact pattern modeling in epidemiology.

Findings

Concurrency remains a key concept in understanding epidemic dynamics.

Recent approaches aim to integrate concurrency with direct contact pattern models.

The review highlights the importance of temporal network structures in disease spread.

Abstract

Diseases spread over temporal networks of interaction events between individuals. Structures of these temporal networks hold the keys to understanding epidemic propagation. One early concept of the literature to aid in discussing these structures is concurrency -- quantifying individuals' tendency to form time-overlapping "partnerships". Although conflicting evaluations and an overabundance of operational definitions have marred the history of concurrency, it remains important, especially in the area of sexually transmitted infections. Today, much of theoretical epidemiology uses more direct models of contact patterns, and there is an emerging body of literature trying to connect methods to the concurrency literature. In this review, we will cover the development of the concept of concurrency and these new approaches.