AN AGENT-BASED MODEL TO INVESTIGATE BEHAVIOR IMPACTS ON VECTOR-BORNE DISEASE SPREAD Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • 2017 IEEE. This study aims to use agent-based simulation as a tool to illustrate the importance of human behavior in the dynamics of vector-borne disease spread. For this, a baseline compartmental model was developed and, based on it, four different scenarios considering human behavior were proposed: two assuming the whole population adopts the same behavior and two assuming each individual has his/her own behavior. Paired t-test was used to compare the proposed scenarios with the baseline, based on two output responses from the simulation experiments: total number of infected people and duration of the epidemic. Results from the data analysis indicate that behavior is an important factor and, as such, it must be further investigated and included in infectious-disease spread models to obtain more accurate results. As a final remark, we presented possible explanations to why human behavior has been neglected in many epidemiological models up to now.

name of conference

  • 2017 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)

published proceedings

  • 2017 WINTER SIMULATION CONFERENCE (WSC)

author list (cited authors)

  • Scheidegger, A., & Banerjee, A.

citation count

  • 2

complete list of authors

  • Scheidegger, Anna Paula Galvao||Banerjee, Amarnath

publication date

  • January 2017