A modelling study to explore the effects of regional socio-economics on the spreading of epidemics.

Epidemics, apart from affecting the health of populations, can have large impacts on their social and economic behavior and subsequently feed back to and influence the spreading of the disease. This calls for systematic investigation which factors affect significantly and either beneficially or adversely the disease spreading and regional socio-economics. Based on our recently developed hybrid agent-based socio-economy and epidemic spreading model we perform extensive exploration of its six-dimensional parameter space of the socio-economic part of the model, namely, the attitudes towards the spread of the pandemic, health and the economic situation for both, the population and government agents who impose regulations.

Socio-economic pandemic modelling: case of Spain.

A global disaster, such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic, affects every aspect of our lives and there is a need to investigate these highly complex phenomena if one aims to diminish their impact in the health of the population, as well as their socio-economic stability. In this paper we present an attempt to understand the role of the governmental authorities and the response of the rest of the population facing such emergencies. We present a mathematical model that takes into account the epidemiological features of the pandemic and also the actions of people responding to it, focusing only on three aspects of the system, namely, the fear of catching this serious disease, the impact on the economic activities and the compliance of the people to the mitigating measures adopted by the authorities.