Date of Award

Spring 4-22-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Mathematics

First Advisor

Rachel Roe-Dale

Abstract

Many infectious disease models build upon the classical Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model. The SIR model is a compartmental model that is used to model disease transmission throughout a population. The SIR model and its variations often focus on the transmission of disease but rarely include behavioral or informational components that explore how the perception of a disease influences transmission. In this thesis we propose a six compartment SIR model that segments the classical SIR model based on knowledge of information to explore the sharing of information and its ability to increase and decrease transmission. We designate these two model states as aware and unaware based on whether the information is known by the population. We find that while good behavior is useful in decreasing community transmission, bad behavior is significantly more damaging for the community in terms of disease transmission. These preliminary results suggest that more research is needed on the effect of information and behavior on disease transmission.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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