Agent-Based Modeling for Campus-Specific Transmission of Infectious Diseases

摘要

Infectious diseases can be transmitted from person to person through human interactions. Although numerous studies have investigated disease transmission dynamics in various spatial contexts, little attention has been paid to the university campuses. As one of the most dynamic and interactive places, university campuses present high risks of spreading diseases among students, faculty, and staff. This study designs an epidemic model using an agent-based approach to represent the dynamics of disease transmission on campus. This design specifies agent, location, time, interaction, and transmission as five essential modeling components. Based on the design, a case study is conducted to simulate an influenza epidemic on a typical campus of the U.S. universities. There are 32,887 campus individuals, including 28,886 students, 991 faculty, and 3,000 staff. The simulated on-campus influenza epidemic demonstrates different patterns when the initial case is introduced by a student, a faculty, and a staff. Of these three scenarios, the simulation result shows that the epidemic grows much more rapidly when the initial case is a student, resulting in a significantly greater number of infected individuals on campus. In addition, the results also demonstrate that the peak time of the epidemic is approximately two and half month later since the first day of the semester, given the initial case is introduced on the first day of the semester.