A framework for epidemic spreading in multiplex networks of metapopulations

We propose a theoretical framework for the study of epidemics in structured metapopulations, with heterogeneous agents, subjected to recurrent mobility patterns. We propose to represent the heterogeneity in the composition of the metapopulations as layers in a multiplex network, where nodes would correspond to geographical areas and layers account for the mobility patterns of agents of the same class. We analyze both the classical Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible and the Susceptible-Infected-Removed epidemic models within this framework, and compare macroscopic and microscopic indicators of the spreading process with extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Our results are in excellent agreement with the simulations. We also derive an exact expression of the epidemic threshold on this general framework revealing a non-trivial dependence on the mobility parameter. Finally, we use this new formalism to address the spread of diseases in real cities, specifically in the city of Medellin, Colombia, whose population is divided into six socio-economic classes, each one identified with a layer in this multiplex formalism.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

Predictive spatio-temporal modelling with neural networks

Hongbin Liu studied the predictive spatio-temporal modelling using Neural Networks. Predictive spatio-temporal modelling is a challenge task due to the complex non-linear spatio-temporal dependencies, data sparsity and uncertainty. Hongbin Liu investigated the modelling difficulties and proposed three novel models to tackle the difficulties for three common spatio-temporal datasets. He also conducted extensive experiments on several real-world datasets for various spatio-temporal prediction tasks, such as travel mode classification, next-location prediction, weather forecasting and meteorological imagery prediction. The results show our proposed models consistently achieve exceptional improvements over state-of-the-art baselines