Epidemic spreading in time-varying community networks

Ren, Guangming; Wang, Xingyuan

The spreading processes of many infectious diseases have comparable time scale as the network evolution. Here, we present a simple networks model with time-varying community structure, and investigate susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic spreading processes in this model. By both theoretic analysis and numerical simulations, we show that the efficiency of epidemic spreading in this model depends intensively on the mobility rate q of the individuals among communities. We also find that there exists a mobility rate threshold q(c). The epidemic will survive when q > q(c) and die when q < q(c). These results can help understanding the impacts of human travel on the epidemic spreading in complex networks with community structure.