Epidemic dynamics on complex networks

TL;DR

This paper reviews how the structure of complex networks influences epidemic spread, covering classical models, effects on small-world and scale-free networks, and immunization strategies, highlighting ongoing challenges and future directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of epidemic dynamics on complex networks, integrating classical models with recent findings on network effects and immunization methods.

Findings

Epidemic spread is significantly affected by network topology.

Scale-free networks facilitate faster epidemic outbreaks.

Immunization strategies vary in effectiveness depending on network structure.

Abstract

Recently, motivated by the pioneer works that reveal the small-world effect and scale-free property of various real-life networks, many scientists devote themselves into studying complex networks. One of the ultimate goals is to understand how the topological structures of networks affect the dynamics upon them. In this paper, we give a brief review on the studies of epidemic dynamics on complex networks, including the description of classical epidemic models, the epidemic spread on small-world and scale-free networks, and network immunization. Finally, a prospect is addressed and some interesting problems are listed.