A Model for the Spread of Infectious Diseases in a Region

In understanding the dynamics of the spread of an infectious disease, it is important tounderstand how a town’s place in a network of towns within a region will impact how the diseasespreads to that town and from that town. In this article, we take a model for the spread of aninfectious disease in a single town and scale it up to simulate a region containing multiple towns.The model is validated by looking at how adding additional towns and commuters influences theoutbreak in a single town. We then look at how the centrality of a town within a network influencesthe outbreak. Our main finding is that the commuters coming into a town have a greater effect onwhether an outbreak will spread to a town than the commuters going out. The findings on centralityof a town and how it influences an outbreak could potentially be used to help influence future policyand intervention strategies such as school closure policies.