Interplay between epidemic and information spreading on multiplex networks

Abstract

Every outbreak of a serious infectious disease has the potential to pose unprecedented challenges to humanity. Understanding how epidemic spreads among populations is a key step in preventing and controlling it to spread. In this paper, for modeling the epidemic spreading and its associated information spreading, we put forward a novel coupled two-layered networking framework. One layer deals with the modeling of an SI1I2R process, where each node in the network may be in four states: susceptible, mildly infected, severely infected and recovery. Whereas, for the other layer, the transmission dynamics can be represented by an unaware–aware–refractory (UAT) model, which is significantly different from the classical unaware–aware–unaware (UAU) process since there exist individuals who are unwilling to share information. Moreover, we set a group of discrete time Microscopic Markov equations and derive the epidemic threshold. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out to validate the analytical results. This work is of great significance to prevent epidemic, and it can be applicable in guiding the input on disease-related information on complex networks.