The Effects of Diffusion of Information on Epidemic Spread -- A Multilayer Approach

TL;DR

This study models the spread of disease and information on a multilayer network, showing how network topology and connectivity influence the effectiveness of information in controlling epidemics.

Contribution

It introduces a multilayer network model combining disease and information spread, analyzing how network structure affects epidemic control strategies.

Findings

Information spread can suppress epidemics under certain network conditions.

Increased complexity of contact networks reduces individual awareness impact.

Sparse contact networks enhance the role of information in epidemic control.

Abstract

In this work, the aim is to study the spread of a contagious disease and information on a multilayer social system. The main idea is to find a criterion under which the adoption of the spreading information blocks or suppresses the epidemic spread. A two-layer network is the base of the model. The first layer describes the direct contact interactions, while the second layer is the information propagation layer. Both layers consist of the same nodes. The society consists of five different categories of individuals: susceptibles, infective, recovered, vaccinated and precautioned. Initially, only one infected individual starts transmitting the infection. Direct contact interactions spread the infection to the susceptibles. The information spreads through the second layer. The SIR model is employed for the infection spread, while the Bass equation models the adoption of information. The control parameters of the competition between the spread of information and spread of disease are the topology and the density of connectivity. The topology of the information layer is a scale-free network with increasing density of edges. In the contact layer, regular and scale-free networks with the same average degree per node are used interchangeably. The observation is that increasing complexity of the contact network reduces the role of individual awareness. If the contact layer consists of networks with limited range connections, or the edges sparser than the information network, spread of information plays a significant role in controlling the epidemics.