Scale-dependent Temporal Signatures of Arboviral Transmission in Urban Environments

TL;DR

This study introduces a probabilistic spatiotemporal model to analyze arboviral transmission in urban areas, revealing that temporal scale influences disease differentiation more than spatial proximity.

Contribution

The paper presents a biologically constrained, scale-aware modeling framework that uncovers scale-dependent signatures in arboviral epidemic dynamics using large-scale georeferenced data.

Findings

Spatial proximity does not discriminate between diseases at the urban scale.

Temporal dynamics differentiate dengue, Zika, and chikungunya beyond a critical time window.

Biologically constrained models reveal common transmission structures, unlike unconstrained models.

Abstract

Understanding epidemic dynamics in urban environments requires models that capture interactions across space and time while incorporating biological constraints. In this work, we propose a probabilistic spatiotemporal framework based on pairwise interaction kernels to analyze arboviral transmission using large-scale georeferenced data from Recife, Brazil. The model describes interactions as a function of spatial distance and temporally delayed influence, with parameters estimated via maximum likelihood. Our results reveal a marked asymmetry between spatial and temporal components. The spatial parameter systematically collapses, indicating that spatial proximity does not provide discriminatory information between diseases at the urban scale. In contrast, temporal dynamics exhibit scale-dependent behavior: statistical differentiation between dengue, Zika, and chikungunya emerges only beyond a critical temporal window. We show that unconstrained models primarily capture short-term co-occurrence, leading to apparent but non-robust differences, while biologically constrained models reveal a common underlying transmission structure. Additionally, reconstructed transmission networks exhibit localized and structured interaction patterns consistent with plausible epidemic propagation. These findings demonstrate that epidemic differentiation is not intrinsic, but an emergent phenomenon dependent on temporal scale, highlighting the importance of biologically grounded and scale-aware modeling in spatiotemporal epidemic analysis.