The consistency of the pandemic simulations between the SEIR model and the MAS model

Abstract

There are two main methods for pandemic simulations: the SEIR model and the MAS model. The SEIR model can deal with simulations quickly for many homogeneous populations with simple ordinary differential equations; however, the model cannot accommodate many detailed conditions. The MAS model, the multi-agent simulation, can deal with detailed simulations under the many kinds of initial and boundary conditions with simple social network models. However, the computing cost will grow exponentially as the population size becomes larger. Thus, simulations in the large-scale model would hardly be realized unless supercomputers are available. By combining these two methods, we may perform the pandemic simulations in the large-scale model with lower costs. That is, the MAS model is used in the early stage of a pandemic simulation to determine the appropriate parameters to be used in the SEIR model. With these obtained parameters, the SEIR model may then be used. To investigate the validity of this combined method, we first compare the simulation results between the SEIR model and the MAS model. Simulation results of the MAS model and the SEIR model that uses the parameters obtained by the MAS model simulation are found to be close to each other. Copyright © 2009 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.