Abstract

There is direct evidence for the spread of infectious diseases such as influenza, SARS, measles, and norovirus in locations where large groups of people gather at high densities e.g. theme parks, airports, etc. The mixing of susceptible and infectious individuals in these high people density man-made environments involves pedestrian movement which is generally not taken into account in modeling studies of disease dynamics. We address this problem through a multiscale model that combines pedestrian dynamics with stochastic infection spread models. The pedestrian dynamics model is utilized to generate the trajectories of motion and contacts between infected and susceptible individuals. We incorporate this information into a stochastic infection dynamics model with infection probability and contact radius as primary inputs. This generic model is applicable for several directly transmitted diseases by varying the input parameters related to infectivity and transmission mechanisms. Through this multiscale framework, we estimate the aggregate numbers and probabilities of newly infected people for different winding queue configurations. We find that the queue configuration has a significant impact on disease spread for a range of infection radii and transmission probabilities. We quantify the effectiveness of wall separators in suppressing the disease spread compared to rope separators. Further, we find that configurations with short aisles lower the infection spread when rope separators are used.

Highlights

  • Pedestrian crowds are commonly observed in all public locations offering entertainment, transportation, social or religious activities

  • Model for infectious disease spread in pedestrian queues number of contacts and thereby impact infectious disease spread

  • The mixing of susceptible and infectious individuals in these high people density environments involves pedestrian movement which is often not taken into account in the modeling studies of disease dynamics

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Summary

Introduction

Pedestrian crowds are commonly observed in all public locations offering entertainment, transportation, social or religious activities. The mass gathering of people congregated in limited space often elevates the risk of infectious disease spread due to the increased contacts between susceptible and infectious individuals. Model for infectious disease spread in pedestrian queues epidemic outbreaks in high pedestrian density locations such as transportation hubs, entertainment venues, (e.g. theme parks, stadiums) and mass gatherings [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Several outbreaks of directly transmitted gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases have been reported in religious and social outdoor mass gatherings [8,9,10], international meetings [11, 12] and concert halls [13]

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