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    Moving the epidemic tipping point through topologically targeted social distancing
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2021) Ansari, Sara; Anvari, Mehrnaz; Pfeffer, Oskar; Molkenthin, Nora; Moosavi, Mohammad R.; Hellmann, Frank; Heitzig, Jobst; Kurths, Jürgen
    The epidemic threshold of a social system is the ratio of infection and recovery rate above which a disease spreading in it becomes an epidemic. In the absence of pharmaceutical interventions (i.e. vaccines), the only way to control a given disease is to move this threshold by non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing, past the epidemic threshold corresponding to the disease, thereby tipping the system from epidemic into a non-epidemic regime. Modeling the disease as a spreading process on a social graph, social distancing can be modeled by removing some of the graphs links. It has been conjectured that the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the resulting graph corresponds to the systems epidemic threshold. Here we use a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to study those link removals that do well at reducing the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix. The MCMC method generates samples from the relative canonical network ensemble with a defined expectation value of λmax . We call this the "well-controlling network ensemble" (WCNE) and compare its structure to randomly thinned networks with the same link density. We observe that networks in the WCNE tend to be more homogeneous in the degree distribution and use this insight to define two ad-hoc removal strategies, which also substantially reduce the largest eigenvalue. A targeted removal of 80% of links can be as effective as a random removal of 90%, leaving individuals with twice as many contacts. Finally, by simulating epidemic spreading via either an SIS or an SIR model on network ensembles created with different link removal strategies (random, WCNE, or degree-homogenizing), we show that tipping from an epidemic to a non-epidemic state happens at a larger critical ratio between infection rate and recovery rate for WCNE and degree-homogenized networks than for those obtained by random removals.
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    Monte Carlo basin bifurcation analysis
    ([London] : IOP, 2020) Gelbrecht, Maximilian; Kurths, Jürgen; Hellmann, Frank
    Many high-dimensional complex systems exhibit an enormously complex landscape of possible asymptotic states. Here, we present a numerical approach geared towards analyzing such systems. It is situated between the classical analysis with macroscopic order parameters and a more thorough, detailed bifurcation analysis. With our machine learning method, based on random sampling and clustering methods, we are able to characterize the different asymptotic states or classes thereof and even their basins of attraction. In order to do this, suitable, easy to compute, statistics of trajectories with randomly generated initial conditions and parameters are clustered by an algorithm such as DBSCAN. Due to its modular and flexible nature, our method has a wide range of possible applications in many disciplines. While typical applications are oscillator networks, it is not limited only to ordinary differential equation systems, every complex system yielding trajectories, such as maps or agent-based models, can be analyzed, as we show by applying it the Dodds-Watts model, a generalized SIRS-model, modeling social and biological contagion. A second order Kuramoto model, used, e.g. to investigate power grid dynamics, and a Stuart-Landau oscillator network, each exhibiting a complex multistable regime, are shown as well. The method is available to use as a package for the Julia language. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.