Epidemic Spread in Weighted Scale-Free Networks

Abstract

In this letter, we investigate the detailed epidemic spreading process in\nscale-free networks with links' weights that denote familiarity between two\nindividuals and find that spreading velocity reaches a peak quickly then decays\nin a power-law form. Numerical study exhibits that the nodes with larger\nstrength is preferential to be infected, but the hierarchical dynamics are not\nclearly found, which is different from the well-known result in unweighed\nnetwork case. In addition, also by numerical study, we demonstrate that larger\ndispersion of weight of networks results in slower spreading, which indicates\nthat epidemic spreads more quickly on unweighted scale-free networks than on\nweighted scale-free networks with the same condition.\n