Double-edged sword effect of edge overlap on asymmetrically interacting spreading dynamics

There is a close interplay between the disease spreading on contact network and corresponding information propagation on communication network. Especially, it will be of much interest when there are certain overlaps between the topological edges of communication network and contact network. In this paper, we study the effect of inter-layer edge overlap on the asymmetrically interacting spreading dynamics of disease and information, mainly including the final fraction of infected nodes and the epidemic threshold Though extensive simulations, we find that there is a so called double-edged sword effect on epidemic spreading and information propagation. Namely, when the disease spreads faster than information, a smaller amount of overlapping edges is able to effectively inhibit the epidemic spreading. On the contrary, when the information propagates more quickly than disease spreads, the more overlapping edges are, the better the epidemic spreading is suppressed. In further, we show that the epidemic threshold is improved when the overlapping edges increase. These results can provide a significant guidance to make optimal strategies for suppressing epidemic spreading. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.