A Spatial Epidemic Model for Disease Spread Over a Heterogeneous Spatial Support

• Activity Number: 75
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 9, 2015 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Aaron Porter* and Jacob Oleson
• Companies: and The University of Iowa
• Keywords: SEIR ; Spatial ; Mumps ; Conditional Autoregressive ; Rank Reduction ; Epidemic

Abstract

Data from the Iowa Mumps epidemic of 2006 were collected on a spatial lattice over a regular temporal interval. Without access to a person to person contact graph, it is sensible to analyze these data as homogenous within each areal unit, and to use the spatial graph to derive a contact structure. The spatio-temporal partition is fine, and the counts of new infections at each location at each time are sparse. We propose a spatial compartmental epidemic model with general latent time distributions that is capable of smoothing the contact structure, while accounting for spatial heterogeneity in the mixing process between locations. The analysis within focuses on the progression of the disease over both space and time while assessing the impact of a large proportion of the infected people dispersing at the same time because of spring break, and the impact of public awareness on the spread of the Mumps epidemic.