Analysis of epidemic spreading of an SIRS model in complex heterogeneous networks

In this paper, we study the spreading of infections in complex heterogeneous networks based on an SIRS epidemic model with birth and death rates. We find that the dynamics of the network-based SIRS model is completely determined by a threshold value. If the value is less than or equal to one, then the disease-free equilibrium is globally attractive and the disease dies out. Otherwise, the disease-free equilibrium becomes unstable and in the meantime there exists uniquely an endemic equilibrium which is globally asymptotically stable. A series of numerical experiments are given to illustrate the theoretical results. We also consider the SIRS model in the clustered scale-free networks to examine the effect of network community structure on the epidemic dynamics. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.