Modeling the impact of urbanization on infectious disease transmission in developing countries: a case study in Changchun City, China

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated model to model the effects of urbanization on infectious disease transmission by coupling a cellular automata (CA) land use development model, population projection matrix model and CA epidemic model. The improvement of this model lies in using an improved CA epidemic model that can divide individuals into three states (susceptible, infected and recovered) and combine connection factor, movement factor into the epidemic model to provide more helpful outcomes in infectious disease transmission. A population density surface model and a household density surface were used to bridge the gap between urbanization and infectious disease transmission. A case study is presented involving modelling infectious disease transmission in Changchun City, a rapidly urbanizing city in China. The simulation results for Changchun City over a 30-year period show that the average numbers of susceptible individuals, infected individuals and recovered individuals in the latter time are greater than those in the previous time during the process of urbanization. In addition, the average numbers of susceptible individuals, infected individuals and recovered individuals increase with higher population growth rate.