Author(s)

R. Kasprzyk, A. Najgebauer & D. Pierzchała

Abstract

This paper focuses its attention on a project named CARE – Creative Application to Remedy Epidemics. CARE is a subsystem of monitoring, early warning and forecasting system SARNA, which was built at the Military University of Technology and was put into practice in the Government Safety Centre. CARE is a creative software solution that takes advantage of pioneering sociological theories, graph and network theory and the state-of-the-art in software technologies. Its very purpose, of particularly high importance nowadays, is to counter infectious diseases, such as a flu. The paper deals with research of Complex Networks displaying the so called, Scale Free and Small World features, which make them accurate models of many networks – Social Networks in particular. These features on one hand appear to boost efficiency in communication networks and on the other speed up the spreading of many diseases. Keywords: social networks, complex networks, epidemic modeling and simulation, vaccination strategies. 1 Introduction Among many disasters on a worldwide scale there is one that concerns almost every country of the world. This is the influenza virus (flu) and the new strain, which is called swine influenza (A H1N1). Last season’s flu has infected so many people that the problem of lack of hospital beds appeared. Due to the high risk of infection, according to legal acts, the Government Safety Centre (Polish acronym RCB) had to carry out tasks of daily monitoring of influenza and influenza-like illness in the country. Due to this reason and at the request of the RCB, at the Military University of Technology, a dedicated early warning and

Keywords

social networks, complex networks, epidemic modeling andsimulation, vaccination strategies