Simulating the spread of influenza pandemic of 2009 considering international traffic
Pandemics have the potential to cause immense disruption and damage to communities and societies. In this paper, we model the influenza pandemic of 2009. We propose a hybrid model to determine how the pandemic spreads through the world. The model considers both SEIR-based model for local areas and the network model for global connection between countries referring to data on international travelers. Our interest is to reproduce the situation using the data of the early stage of the pandemic and to predict the future transition by extending the simulation cycle. Our simulation result predicts the second peak of the pandemic in the real world by considering the factors of tendency of seasonal influenza and people’s reaction against the infection. Without considering these factors, the simulation does not predict the second peak of the pandemic in the real world. We conclude that the seasonal tendency and people’s reaction are important factors for the spreading of the pandemic.