Epidemic Disease Spreading Simulation Model Based on Census Data

Abstract

Epidemic models are used to analyze the spreading of epidemic diseases, estimate public health needs, and assess the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. Modeling scope of an epidemic model ranges from the regional scale to national and global scale. Most of the epidemic models developed in Korea are at the national scale using the equation-based model. While these models are useful for designing and evaluating national public health policies, they do not provide sufficient details. As an alternative, individual-based models at the regional scale are often used to describe disease spreading, so that various mitigation strategies can be designed and tested. This paper presents an individual-based epidemic spreading model at regional scale. This model incorporates 2005 census data to build the synthetic population in the model representing Daejeon in 2005. The model’s capability is demonstrated by an example where we assess the effectiveness of several mitigation strategies using the model.