Speaker: Sophie Hautphenne

Title: Sensitivity Analysis of Epidemic Networks

Abstract:
In this talk, we provide analytical expressions for the sensitivity of the size of an 
influenza epidemic spreading among a set of cities connected by air routes in the United 
States, with respect to two types of parameters: the contamination rates and the travel 
rates. For that purpose, we approximate the early stages of the epidemic by a multitype 
branching process, which has the advantage of being more tractable than an epidemic model 
such as the SIR. We study the resulting changes in the sensitivities when plane contamination 
is taken into account. Finally, we consider vaccination and analyze the sensitivity of the 
total size of the epidemic with respect to the fraction of vaccinated people. The sensitivity 
analysis notably informs us about the impact of small errors in the data on pertinent measures 
obtained from the model, and highlights the parameters which affect the most the evolution of 
the disease.