Individual-Based Modelling on the Spread of Infectious
Diseases in Singapore
Participants:
Cheng Tee Hiang,
Xiuju Fu,
Kee Khoon Gary Lee,
Harold Soh,
Stefan Ma,
Limsoon Wong,
Gaoxi Xiao,
Shi Xiao,
Zhang Tianyou,
Zhou Jie.
Background
A large-scale epidemic simulation model of Singapore will be constructed
in this project by taking demographic, social contact, and geographic
factors into consideration. The case study we present is the simulation
on human-transmissible avian influenza spreading in Singapore. People,
in the course of carrying out their daily activities, move between
different locations, exposing themselves to infectious agents within
these locations and meanwhile transporting the agents between
different locations as well. We represent these processes by a large
complex network model, in which there could be more than 4 million
nodes (vertices) representing the whole Singapore population and
the social inter-activities (pandemic related).
Objectives
The research work is mainly composed of three parts:
- Data collections and preliminary studies, where the main objective
is to collect the right kind of data effectively such that later
simulations and analyses can have a very reliable starting point.
- Simulations and modelling, where infectious disease spreading
and intervention strategies will be modelled and simulated.
Individual-based simulations will play a central role in this study to
examine epidemic and immunization behaviours of the highly-complex
system of Singapore.
- Strategy developments for epidemic control and recovery.
In epidemic control, counter measures will be designed and evaluated
for different stages of endemic procedure in different scenarios. In
recovery strategy developments, after-crisis reconstructions of
economic and social systems will be studies.
The project will not only handle a special case of infectious diseases
like avian influenza, but also contribute to enhance fundamental
knowledge of epidemiology sciences. Essential information
obtained from the simulation model will help health agency develop
effective containment strategies in advance of a pandemic infectious
disease. The basic simulation model embedding contexts of social
connectivity of Singapore can be extended to measure scale and
make predictions on the spread of other infectious diseases.
Project Activity Records /
Project Progress Reports /
Questionaires
Selected Publications
- X. Fu, W. J. I. Teo, H. Soh, G. Xiao, G. Lee.
Simulating Avian Influenza Spread over Singapore Clinic Networks.
Proceedings of X International Symposium on Respiratory Viral Infections,
pages ???--???, Singapore, 28 February - 3 March 2008.
- X. Fu, S. Lim, L. Wang, G. Lee, S. Ma, L. Wong, G. Xiao.
Key Node Selection for Containing Infectious Disease Spread
Using Particle Swarm Optimization.
Proceedings of IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium 2009,
pages 109--113, Nashville, USA, 29 March - 2 April 2009.
- Y. Wang, G. Xiao, T. H. Cheng, S. Xiao, X. Fu.
Robustness of Complex Communication Networks under Link Attacks.
Proceedings of ACM International Conference on
Advanced Infocomm Technology,
pages ???---???, Shenzhen, China, 30 July 2008.
- Yubo Wang, Jie Hu, Gaoxi Xiao, Limsoon Wong, Stefan Ma, Tee Hiang Cheng.
A Preliminary Study on the
Effects of Fear Factors in Disease Propagation.
Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Complex Sciences:
Theory and Applications (Complex'2009),
pages 1387-1397, Shanghai, China, 23-25 February 2009.
- Yubo Wang, Gaoxi Xiao, Jie Hu, Tee Hiang Cheng, Limsoon Wong.
Imperfect Targeted Immunization in Scale-Free Networks.
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications,
388(12):2535--2546, June 2009.
Selected Presentations
Acknowledgements
This project is supported in part by
a A*STAR BMRC grant R-252-000-297-305 (26/12/2006 - 25/12/2008).
Last updated: 17/4/09, Limsoon Wong.