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Epidemic centrality — is there an underestimated epidemic impact of network peripheral nodes?

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  • Mile Šikić
  • Alen Lančić
  • Nino Antulov-Fantulin
  • Hrvoje Štefančić

Abstract

In the study of disease spreading on empirical complex networks in SIR model, initially infected nodes can be ranked according to some measure of their epidemic impact. The highest ranked nodes, also referred to as “superspreaders”, are associated to dominant epidemic risks and therefore deserve special attention. In simulations on studied empirical complex networks, it is shown that the ranking depends on the dynamical regime of the disease spreading. A possible mechanism leading to this dependence is illustrated in an analytically tractable example. In systems where the allocation of resources to counter disease spreading to individual nodes is based on their ranking, the dynamical regime of disease spreading is frequently not known before the outbreak of the disease. Therefore, we introduce a quantity called epidemic centrality as an average over all relevant regimes of disease spreading as a basis of the ranking. A recently introduced concept of phase diagram of epidemic spreading is used as a framework in which several types of averaging are studied. The epidemic centrality is compared to structural properties of nodes such as node degree, k-cores and betweenness. There is a growing trend of epidemic centrality with degree and k-cores values, but the variation of epidemic centrality is much smaller than the variation of degree or k-cores value. It is found that the epidemic centrality of the structurally peripheral nodes is of the same order of magnitude as the epidemic centrality of the structurally central nodes. The implications of these findings for the distributions of resources to counter disease spreading are discussed. Copyright EDP Sciences, SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Mile Šikić & Alen Lančić & Nino Antulov-Fantulin & Hrvoje Štefančić, 2013. "Epidemic centrality — is there an underestimated epidemic impact of network peripheral nodes?," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 86(10), pages 1-13, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:86:y:2013:i:10:p:1-13:10.1140/epjb/e2013-31025-5
    DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2013-31025-5
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. van Elteren, Casper & Quax, Rick & Sloot, Peter, 2022. "Dynamic importance of network nodes is poorly predicted by static structural features," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 593(C).
    2. Wu, Tao & Xian, Xingping & Zhong, Linfeng & Xiong, Xi & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2018. "Power iteration ranking via hybrid diffusion for vital nodes identification," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 506(C), pages 802-815.
    3. Youjin Lee & Ashley L. Buchanan & Elizabeth L. Ogburn & Samuel R. Friedman & M. Elizabeth Halloran & Natallia V. Katenka & Jing Wu & Georgios K. Nikolopoulos, 2023. "Finding influential subjects in a network using a causal framework," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 3715-3727, December.
    4. Mayank Kejriwal, 2021. "On using centrality to understand importance of entities in the Panama Papers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-17, March.

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    Keywords

    Statistical and Nonlinear Physics;

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