Information-driven resource allocation for epidemic controlling on multiplex networks

The topic of epidemic controlling has now attracted wide attention from scholars in varies disciplines. In this paper, we focus on the problem of how the self-protection awareness and preferential contact between individuals influence the spreading dynamics. To this end, a coupled resource-epidemic model on top of double layer multiplex networks is proposed. We consider that the awareness of the susceptible individuals is affected by the information of the number of infected neighbors, and the process of resource allocation is determined by the awareness of the susceptible ones. In addition, it is assumed that the infected individuals can contact one neighbor at a time, and the preferential contact between the infected and susceptible nodes will affect the dynamical property. To verify the assumption, we conduct extensive Monte Carlo simulations on double layer networks. To mimic the spreading process of the epidemic, the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) model is adapted in this paper. First of all, we study the impact of awareness on the spreading dynamics and find that, with the increase of the awareness, the threshold of the epidemic decreases and the infected density in the stationary state increases, which suggests that in a pandemic, the healthy individuals should help the infected ones actively in order to suppress the epidemic. In addition, we find that with the increase of the parameter of preferred contact, the epidemic threshold first decreases and then increases. There exists a critical parameter, at which the threshold reaches lowest. Overall, the epidemic can be better suppressed when the infected nodes contact more preferentially to the nodes with large degree nodes.