Resource Allocation for Containing Epidemics from Temporal Network Data

Abstract

We study the problem of containing epidemic spreading processes in temporal networks. We specifically focus on the problem of finding a resource allocation to suppress epidemic infection, provided that an empirical time-series data of connectivities between nodes is available. Although this problem is of practical relevance, it has not been clear how an empirical time-series data can inform our strategy of resource allocations, due to the computational complexity of the problem. In this direction, we present a computationally efficient framework for finding a resource allocation that satisfies a given budget constraint and achieves a given control performance. The framework is based on convex programming and, moreover, allows the performance measure to be described by a wide class of functionals called posynomials with nonnegative exponents. We illustrate our theoretical results using a data of temporal interaction networks within a primary school.