Commuter metapopulation models for epidemic spreading in human mobility networks

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019, the World Health Organization quickly declared it a pandemic, resulting in significant casualties and economic disruptions. Models such as susceptible-infected-removed and metapopulation approaches have been widely used to study its spread. However, traditional metapopulation models, designed primarily for migration, may not adequately represent modern daily commuting patterns. To address this limitation, the Commuter Metapopulation Model (CMPM) was developed, which assigns populations to the edges of commuting networks rather than the nodes, as is the case with Standard Metapopulation Models (SMPMs). The CMPM incorporates mobile telecommunication data to reflect daily human movements, including commuting, school travel, and other mobility patterns, and was applied to the case of South Korea. The results indicate that while the SMPM struggles to capture localized infection variability, the CMPM effectively represents diverse transmission patterns driven by daily commuting behaviors.