An evolutionary perspective of virus propagation

Abstract

This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm that simulates simplified scenarios of the diffusion of an infectious disease within a given population. The proposed evolutionary epidemic diffusion (EED) computational model has a limited number of variables and parameters, but is still able to simulate a variety of configurations that have a good adherence to real-world cases. The use of two space distances and the calculation of spatial 2-dimensional entropy are also examined. Several simulations demonstrate the feasibility of the EED for testing distinct social, logistic and economy risks. The performance of the system dynamics is assessed by several variables and indices. The global information is efficiently condensed and visualized by means of multidimensional scaling.