Contagion processes on urban bus networks in Indian cities

Bus transportation is the most convenient and cheapest way of public transportation in Indian cities. Due to cost-effectiveness and wide reachability, buses bring people to their destinations every day. Although the bus transportation has numerous advantages over other ways of public transportation, this mode of transportation also poses a serious threat of spreading contagious diseases throughout the city. It is extremely difficult to predict the extent and spread of such an epidemic. Earlier studies have focused on the contagion processes on scale-free network topologies; whereas, real-world networks such as bus networks exhibit a wide-spectrum of network topology. Therefore, we aim in this study to understand this complex dynamical process of epidemic outbreak and information diffusion on the bus networks for six different Indian cities using SI and SIR models. We identify epidemic thresholds for these networks which help us in controlling outbreaks by developing node-based immunization techniques. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 451–458, 2016.