Epidemic Propagation Control with Limited Temporary Link Removed

The spread of epidemic in social networks poses great challenges to the human health and public order. It is imperative to develop corresponding countermeasures to control the epidemic propagation. Most of existing works either overlook the reconfiguration of network topology or do not consider the cost of countermeasures. Motivated by these issues, this paper proposes a convenient strategy to control epidemic propagation dramatically based on limited temporary links removed (LTLR). The advantages of our strategy are the source-independent of infection and practical importance. Since the epidemic makes a detour round the hub nodes or be blocked by removing or deactivating links with large betweenness in networks. Simulation results also show that LTLR strategy effectively slows the speed of epidemic propagation and reduces the size of infected nodes in small-world networks. Our strategy can be used widely in the many fields, such as rumor spreading, congestion control in traffic networks, etc.