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University of New Mexico

Spatial spread of infectious diseases

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

In this thesis we do a comparative study of diffusive models with non-diffusive models, looking at the effect movements in the form of simple diffusion have on the spreading of infectious diseases. This study is undertaken within the context of the SI and SIR models, two of the most fundamental models for the propagation of infectious diseases. The diffusive SI and SIR models are supplemented with no flux boundary conditions to insure meaningful comparison of the populations predictions. In addition, we use a one dimensional spatial domain for computational simplicity. The comparison of the SI (and SIR) model with its diffusive counterpart is carried out for a broad spectrum of diffusivities. We identify their ranges of diffusivities for which the predictions of the diffusive and non-diffusive models are in good agreement. Interestingly, we discovered that in the subcritical case, the diffusive SIR model predicts an epidemic outbreak whereas the standard SIR model does not.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Mathematics
Level thesis:degree_level
Masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Mathematics & Statistics
Year
2010

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mora, Aaron
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Embid, Pedro
  • Pedro Embid
  • Eric Craig Toolson
  • Helen Wearing

Subjects

dc:subject × 2

Rights

Language dc:language
English

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digitalrepository.unm.edu:math_etds-1031

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of New Mexico
Base URL
digitalrepository.unm.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mora, Aaron. Spatial spread of infectious diseases. Masters thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1928/10839