Spatio-temporal dynamics of outbreak on a lattice with quenched mobility patterns

TL;DR

This paper presents a computational model of virus spread on a lattice considering quenched mobility patterns, revealing complex spatio-temporal dynamics, spontaneous outbreak cessation, and chaotic behavior influenced by initial conditions.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel lattice-based SIR model incorporating population mobility patterns that lead to emergent barriers and chaotic outbreak dynamics.

Findings

Spontaneous stopping of virus spread without infecting entire population

Power-law behavior in cumulative infected cases

Outbreak evolution exhibits chaotic sensitivity to initial conditions

Abstract

We have designed a computational model of a virus spread near the outbreak threshold. Using computer simulation we studied the Susceptible - Infected - Recovered (SIR) process where in consequence of a force of habit that is manifested by the population mobility patterns, the recovered persons create the spatio-temporal patterns as the barriers to a virus transmission. The results show a spontaneous stopping of the virus spread without a need to infect the whole population, a non-trivial random noise of daily count of infected cases, and power laws of a cumulative count of infected cases. Outbreak evolution strongly depends on the initial conditions thus we concluded that the model has the features of chaotic systems that makes it difficult to predict its behaviors.