Coupling an Agent-Based Model with a Mathematical Model of Rift Valley Fever for Studying the Impact of Animal Migrations on the Rift Valley Fever Transmission

Abstract

Rift valley fever (RVF) is a disease killing principally animals. In this article, we coupled a mathematical model of animal-mosquito interactions with an agent-based model describing the migrations of hosts between cities. The mathematical model describes animal-mosquito interactions in each city and the agent based-model describes the migrations of animals between cities. The coupled model allows to compute at each time the number of infected animals in all cities and to study the impact of host migrations on the dynamics of infections. The obtained results showed that quarantining certain cities can reduce the number of infected hosts. It is also observed that when the density of animal migrations increases, the number of infection cases increases. The developed model brings solutions to both models (mathematical model and agent-based model) limits. This model could help to study and forecasting the Rift Valley Fever transmission and its outbreak in the short and long term.