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.

I. Introduction

The propagation of the epidemic among the population and the Internet will cause great losses to social life. For instance, H7N9 bird flu, SARS, Ebola and other epidemics erupt in the crowd; computer virus, network rumors, network public opinion and so on propagate on the Internet [1]–[3]. In order to control the propagation of the epidemic, it often takes a lot of manpower and material resources. Therefore, it is significant to study the propagation mechanism of the epidemic and then take effective measures to control the propagation of the epidemic. In particular, the study of network epidemics control strategies based on limited resources has more practical value.