Integrating Human Mobility Quantification into Epidemics Prediction for Effectively Assessing Impact of Transportation

The spread of infectious diseases is inseparable from the movement of people. Modern public transportation system enables people to fast travel across countries. While greatly enhancing mobility, it also exponentially accelerates the potential development of epidemics. This paper establishes a SIR simulation model with mobility to explore the spread of virus through different transportation system topologies, studying the accelerating effect of the transportation system on the epidemic. Several simulations indicate that reducing the overall number of people entering the transportation system is the most likely way to slow down the pace of transmission. Filtering infected individuals and limiting the number of people entering the hub stations can slow down the process but is not sufficient to halt the progress.