#26 · Systems biology

Metapopulation models link mobility and surveillance sensitivity to infection dynamics

The dominant thread in these three studies is treating population structure and observation processes as explicit model components rather than fixed background. An age-structured SEIR metapopulation model of COVID-19 in Seoul, using mobile-phone mobility data, finds that targeting adult work flows within clusters reduces transmission. A statistical analysis estimates time-varying polio surveillance sensitivity for each Nigerian LGA and validates it against 2014-2020 WPV1 absence periods. A stochastic metapopulation model of malaria in western Kenya jointly incorporates climate, interventions, immunity and mobility over 2008-2019. The methods differ across studies, so this describes a shared direction rather than a uniform one. What is new is the joint treatment of mobility structure and surveillance performance as analytic targets, although only the polio study estimates surveillance performance directly.