Structural statistics of a human contact network in a research institute

Abstract

Human contact networks are important ways for the spread of infectious diseases, and it is of great significance to study the structure of human contact networks in the real world. In this paper, the human contact data in a research institute of a university is collected using video surveillance devices, and the corresponding human contact network is constructed. On this basis, the structural characteristics of the human contact network are analyzed at the micro and macro levels respectively, and compared with the ER random network, WS small-world network and BA scale-free network. The results show that the human contact network cannot be accurately described by the three commonly used ideal networks, but it still has some structural characteristics of each ideal network. The contact network has more similarities in structure with the WS small-world network, including large clustering coefficient, modularity and average shortest path length, at the same time, it has more hierarchies and weak assortativity. This study can provide experimental support for the construction of network models in epidemic spreading dynamics, and is of great significance for the study of mechanism and control measures of epidemic spreading in complex networks.