Traffic-driven epidemic spreading on networks of mobile agents

Abstract

The question as to how traffic or transportation processes on complex networks can shape the dynamics of epidemic spreading is of great interest for a number of areas. We study traffic-driven epidemic spreading on networks of mobile agents by incorporating two routing strategies: random and greedy. We find that for the case of infinite agent delivery capacity, increasing the moving velocity has opposite effects on the outbreak of epidemic spreading for the two routing strategies. However, expanding the communication range among agents can increase the transportation efficiency but counterintuitively suppress epidemic spreading. For finite delivery capacity, the emergence of traffic congestion can effectively inhibit epidemic spreading for both routing strategies. We provide a mean-field theory to explain the numerical findings. Our results can provide insights into devising effective strategies to suppress the spreading of harmful epidemics on time-varying networks.