New Approaches to Mathematical Models for the Spread of Epidemics

Mathematical models based on the underlying transmission mechanisms of the disease can help the medical/scientific community understand and anticipate the spread of an epidemic and evaluate the potential effectiveness of different approaches for bringing an epidemic under control. The primary goal of our modeling effort is to understand the spread of infectious diseases and to estimate and subsequently predict the impact of control measures on their spread.

Modeling can reduce the uncertainty of the estimates of disease prevalence and aid in the development of scientific understanding of the mechanisms of the disease and of the epidemic. It can also estimate the benefits and the costs of projected interventions and project the requirements that an epidemic will place on the health care system. Thus, the modeling techniques can join with biological, epidemiological, behavioral, and social science studies to produce better projections and better understanding of the epidemic I will describe a flexible, stochastic agent-based decision simulation model for understanding the spread of a disease within a major city and compare it with a class of deterministic differential equation models.