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Modeling Transmission Dynamics of
Infectious Diseases in Shopping Centers
Using Agent-Based Simulation
Yuan Zhou, Prospective Faculty
Industrial Engineering Department
Abstract:
Friday, January 29, 2016 – 1:00 p.m.
IE 205
As infectious diseases remain a major threat to today’s public health, it is critical to understand the
characteristics of their transmission in order to develop effective intervention measures. Prior research
has focused on modeling of the transmission processes in households and workplaces, while paying
little attention to large public venues. Among those places many people interact, shopping centers
present inherent complexity and uncertainty in disease modeling because of the dynamic shopping
population and their varying shopping behavior. Given the large amount of shoppers during Christmas
shopping season, it is especially important to understand, if during a pandemic, how diseases would
spread, thus providing public health officials the guidelines to reducing the risk. To address this
significant challenge, this research captures the topology and attributes of shopping centers, and
develops an Agent-Based Modeling framework. It adequately considers the complexity of five
fundamental model components: spatial relationships, characteristics of shopping center patrons, their
shopping behaviors, contact structure, and disease transmission mechanism. An illustrative example
demonstrates the Influenza transmission in a super-regional shopping center in Buffalo, New York.
Simulation results correspond well to the public surveillance data. Preliminary results of this research
indicate that disease transmission processes in a shopping center are driven primarily by local epidemic
phases and the shopping behavior. The proposed framework offers the fundamental design modules of
an agent-based epidemic model for investigating transmission dynamics of infectious diseases in any
shopping centers, and provides a valuable platform for public health agencies to develop intervention
strategies.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dongping
Duisisa PhD
a PhD
candidate
in Department
the Department
of Industrial
and Management
Systems
Yuan Zhou
candidate
in the
of Industrial
and Systems
Engineering
at
Engineering
the University
of South
Florida.
Her research
focuses infectious
on nonlinear
stochastic
University atatBuffalo.
Her research
focuses
on agent-based
simulation,
disease
modeling
analysis
of complex
systems
withanalytics
applications
in healthcare
andand
systems
modeling,and
health
information
technology,
and data
for healthcare
utilization
engineering.
quality.
January 29, 2016
1:00 p.m.