Efficient Immunization Strategies for Computer Networks and Populations

2002/07/31 by Reuven Cohen, Shlomo Havlin, Daniel ben‐Avraham +1 · 7 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Bacteriophages and microbial interactions #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Misinformation and Its Impacts #cond-mat.dis-nn #q-bio.PE

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.247901

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 247901 (2003) · Revtex, 5 pages, 4 ps figs

openalex publication_date 2003/12/09 · arxiv created 2003/12/10 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

We present an effective immunization strategy for computer networks and populations with broad and, in particular, scale-free degree distributions. The proposed strategy, acquaintance immunization, calls for the immunization of random acquaintances of random nodes (individuals). The strategy requires no knowledge of the node degrees or any other global knowledge, as do targeted immunization strategies. We study analytically the critical threshold for complete immunization. We also study the strategy with respect to the susceptible-infected-removed epidemiological model. We show that the immunization threshold is dramatically reduced with the suggested strategy, for all studied cases.

Citations

• Error and attack tolerance of complex networks
• Evolution of networks
• Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations

Cited by

• Targeted Quarantine Strategies Mitigate SIS-model Cyber Epidemics on Complex Networks
• Optimizing classroom assignments to minimize epidemiological risk: the sibling rewiring problem
• Limited Improvement of Connectivity in Scale-Free Networks by Increasing the Power-Law Exponent
• Learning Network Dismantling Without Handcrafted Inputs
• Self-Repairing Peer-to-Peer Networks
• Heterogeneous Recovery Rates against SIS Epidemics in Directed Networks
• Approximation Algorithms for Reducing the Spectral Radius to Control\n Epidemic Spread

Related

• Epidemic spreading with immunization rate on complex networks
• Two novel immunization strategies for epidemic control in directed scale-free networks with nonlinear infectivity
• Efficient local strategies for vaccination and network attack
• Efficient vaccination strategies for epidemic control using network information
• Simulation-Optimization Approaches for the Network Immunization Problem with Quarantining