Spreading of Epidemics on Scale-Free Networks with Traffic Flow

Abstract

In this paper, based on the mean-field theory, we propose a new susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model to study epidemic spreading on scale-free networks with traffic flow. Theoretical analysis shows that as the network traffic flow increases, the epidemic prevalence is obviously enhanced, and the epidemic threshold is reduced. We also find that the epidemic threshold is related to the ratio between the first and second moments of the network’s algorithm betweenness distribution. Moreover, the heterogeneity levels of the networks weaken the epidemic spreading. We confirm all results by sufficient numerical simulations.