Adaptive Networks Foundations: Modeling, Dynamics, and Applications

Abstract

The public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. We are studying adaptive social networks, focusing on spread of infectious disease as our primary example and including terrorist recruitment as an additional example. In an adaptive network, individuals change their social connections in response to their neighbors' characteristics, and these changes in network topology affect subsequent properties of the individuals. The network adaptation can be disease avoidance or connecting to potential recruits. Major goals of the project included extending previous models to incorporate more realistic network structure, ABSTRACTWe are studying adaptive social networks, focusing on spread of infectious disease as our primary example and including terrorist recruitment as an additional example. In an adaptive network, individuals change their social connections in response to their neighbors' characteristics, and these changes in network topology affect subsequent properties of the individuals. The network adaptation can be disease avoidance or connecting to potential recruits. Major goals of the project included extending previous models to incorporate more realistic network structure, adding spread of information that affects human behavior, studying the extinction of diseases, developing control strategies for epidemics on adaptive networks, and developing tools to analyze and monitor adaptive network properties. We have extended models to include network community structure, information spread, and more realistic social adaptation. We developed the first adaptive network model for terrorist recruitment. Our analytic work includes new techniques for predicting extinction rates of epidemics and the trajectory to extinction, methods to apply this to extinction on a network, and new moment closure approximation techniques that lead to more accurate predictions. For monitoring and control, we developed a method to quantify network adaptation and studied vaccine control for epidemics in adaptive networks.(a) Papers published in peer-reviewed journals (N/A for none)Enter List of papers submitted or published that acknowledge ARO support from the start of the project to the date of this printing. List the papers, including journal references, in the following categories: