Finding the Optimal Vaccination Strategy for Limiting Epidemic Outbreaks through Simulation

Jan 2019 ~ BSc Course "Business Simulation"

Length:   1w (at 1.0 FTE)

Programming language:   Java

Data:  Social graph, providing connections between individuals in a society, and transition probabilities for the average person to contact, recover, and become susceptible to infection depending on the status of his/her connections

Problem description:
Inspecting and modeling the spread of epidemics based on various vaccination strategies

Approach & Results:
Infected a single individual with the help of a random generator and implemented the cycle of the disease (susceptible -> infected -> recovered -> susceptible), using the given transition probabilities. Through trial and error, the simulation model was used to determine how the epidemic spreads over time, as well as the lowest percentage of the population that has to be vaccinated such that the disease does not spread over a certain percentage. Moreover, the model was designed to include different vaccination strategies, such as treating random citizens or vaccinating the most notorious people in the community. Accordingly, the drawn conclusion was that treating the most popular persons has a tremendous impact in comparison with vaccinating random people, indicating a decrease of up to 37% in the maximum spread of the epidemic, from 52% to 15%.

  • Address

    Amsterdam, the Netherlands