Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 18: Networks II (with SOE)
DY 18.4: Talk
Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 11:00–11:15, H 0110
Interplay between epidemics and network topology in a growing population — •Güven Demirel1 and Thilo Gross2 — 1Max Plax Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany — 2Merchant Venturers School of Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The structure of social contact networks strongly influences the dynamics of epidemic diseases. In particular the scale-free structure of real-world social networks allegedly allows unlikely diseases with low infection rates to spread and become endemic. However, in particular for potentially fatal diseases also the impact of the disease on the social structure should not be neglected. In this study, we consider the growth of a network by preferential attachment from which nodes are simultaneously removed due to an SIR epidemic. By comparison to network simulations we show that the interplay between topological evolution and epidemic dynamics can be captured by an analytical approximation. This reveals that increased infectivity increases the prevalence of the disease but also leads to the reemergence of an epidemic threshold by causing a transition from scale-free to exponential topology.