Identifying Essential Network Properties for Disease Spread Peter J. Mucha, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology, &Carolina Center for Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project Summary (Abstract) Interdisciplinarily rooted across mathematical graph theory, statistics, the social sciences, statistical physics, computer science, and applied mathematics, network analysis holds the potential to make critical insights about the spread of disease in a population, across a variety of mechanisms of biological transmission and behavioral influence. However, to realistically influence future prediction and behavioral intervention, the results of such analysis must not rely on complete and perfect information about the entire underlying network of contagion. Instead, reduced-order mod els of disease spread within the population will continue to be employed;but those models will be improved by additional use of more limited network information, and by an improved understanding about which essential network features influence the predictions and accuracy of models. This proposed research program leverages and combines recent advances in two areas of net- work analysis-approximate models of network-coupled dynamics and new community detection technologies-with the specific aim of generating, exploring, and cataloguing a family of comparisons between network-level simulations and reduced-order models of disease spread. Supporting activities will include (1) development of community-aware sub compartmented models which generalize existing network-aware systems, (2) algorithmic improvement of the new multislice network community detection method, and (3) additional theoretical developments in community detection specifically targeted to support the specific aim of improved modeling of disease spread. The relevance to public health is in the targeted application to improved mathematical modeling of the spread of both biological diseases and social contagions, emphasizing the identification of the essential network structures necessary for accurate modeling. By identifying the essential properties of the underlying networks paired with model equation systems, the results of this study will provide fundamental insight about which network properties must be accurately sampled to understand the disease dynamics in that population, with future implications for population-level modeling and intervention across a wide variety of diseases.

Public Health Relevance

Identifying Essential Network Properties for Disease Spread Peter J. Mucha, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology, &Carolina Center for Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
5R21GM099493-02
Application #
8289402
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-RPHB-A (51))
Program Officer
Marcus, Stephen
Project Start
2011-08-01
Project End
2014-07-31
Budget Start
2012-08-01
Budget End
2014-07-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$182,244
Indirect Cost
$57,244
Name
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Department
Biostatistics & Other Math Sci
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
608195277
City
Chapel Hill
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27599
Malik, Nishant; Bookhagen, Bodo; Mucha, Peter J (2016) Spatiotemporal patterns and trends of Indian monsoonal rainfall extremes. Geophys Res Lett 43:1710-1717
Malik, Nishant; Shi, Feng; Lee, Hsuan-Wei et al. (2016) Transitivity reinforcement in the coevolving voter model. Chaos 26:123112
Verdery, Ashton M; Mouw, Ted; Bauldry, Shawn et al. (2015) Network Structure and Biased Variance Estimation in Respondent Driven Sampling. PLoS One 10:e0145296
Jeub, Lucas G S; Balachandran, Prakash; Porter, Mason A et al. (2015) Think locally, act locally: detection of small, medium-sized, and large communities in large networks. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys 91:012821
Malik, Nishant; Marwan, Norbert; Zou, Yong et al. (2014) Fluctuation of similarity to detect transitions between distinct dynamical regimes in short time series. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys 89:062908
Melnik, Sergey; Porter, Mason A; Mucha, Peter J et al. (2014) Dynamics on modular networks with heterogeneous correlations. Chaos 24:023106
Bassett, Danielle S; Wymbs, Nicholas F; Porter, Mason A et al. (2014) Cross-linked structure of network evolution. Chaos 24:013112
Bassett, Danielle S; Porter, Mason A; Wymbs, Nicholas F et al. (2013) Robust detection of dynamic community structure in networks. Chaos 23:013142
Shi, Feng; Mucha, Peter J; Durrett, Richard (2013) Multiopinion coevolving voter model with infinitely many phase transitions. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys 88:062818
Bassett, Danielle S; Wymbs, Nicholas F; Rombach, M Puck et al. (2013) Task-based core-periphery organization of human brain dynamics. PLoS Comput Biol 9:e1003171

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