Mobility-based SIR model for complex networks: with case study Of COVID-19

Abstract

In the last decade, humanity has faced many different pandemics such as SARS, H1N1, and presently novel coronavirus (COVID-19). On one side, scientists have developed vaccinations, and on the other side, there is a need to propose models that can help in understanding the spread of these pandemics as it can help governmental and other concerned agencies to be well prepared, especially for pandemics, which spreads faster like COVID-19. The main reason for some epidemic turning into pandemics is the connectivity among different regions of the world, which makes it easier to affect a wider geographical area, often worldwide. Also, the population distribution and social coherence in the different regions of the world are non-uniform. Thus, once the epidemic enters a region, then the local population distribution plays an important role. Inspired by these ideas, we propose two versions of our mobility-based SIR model, (i) fully mixed and (ii) for complex networks, which especially takes into account real-life interactions. To the best of our knowledge, this model is the first of its kind, which takes into account the population distribution, connectivity of different geographic locations across the globe, and individuals’ network connectivity information. In addition to presenting the mathematical proof of our models, we have performed extensive simulations using synthetic data to demonstrate the generalization capability of our models. Finally, to demonstrate the wider scope of our model, we applied our model to forecast the COVID-19 cases at county level (Estonia) and regional level (Rhône-Alpes region in France).