Epidemic spreading with awareness diffusion on activity-driven networks

Acknowledging the significance of awareness diffusion and behavioral response in contagion outbreaks has been regarded as an indispensable prerequisite for a complete understanding of epidemic spreading. Recent studies from the research community have accumulated overwhelming evidence for the incessantly evolving structure of the underlying networks. Thus there is an impelling need to capture the interplay between the epidemic spreading and awareness diffusion on time-varying networks. In this paper, we consider a behavioral model in which susceptible individuals become alert and adopt a preventive behavior under the local risk perception characterized by a decision-making threshold. The impact of awareness diffusion on the epidemic threshold is investigated under the framework of activity-driven network. Results show that the local epidemic situation in risk perception and the duration of preventive effect are crucial for raising the epidemic threshold. The analytical results are corroborated by Monte Carlo simulations.