Generic model overview

The EMOD generic model forms the foundation for all other disease models in EMOD. It provides the fundamental logic for contact-based disease transmission and interventions aimed at controlling the spread of disease that are targeted to individuals or geographic nodes. You can easily add heterogeneity to your simulation by configuring he infectivity of the disease, susceptibility of individuals, and more. The generic model does not contain logic for disease biology, but it can be configured to model a variety of diseases, such as influenza, Ebola, measles, and more. To use the generic model, set the configuration parameter Simulation_Type to GENERIC_SIM.

The figure below demonstrates the main components of the generic EMOD simulation type. Individuals reside in geographic nodes and can migrate from one node to another. Infected individuals shed contagion into a pool that can infect susceptible individuals. You can assign properties to individuals and nodes to vary how transmission or interventions occur.

In the generic model, you can add heterogeneous transmission in a population using the Heterogeneous Intra-Node Transmission (HINT) feature. Using this feature, you assign different properties to individuals in a population and differentially scale the infectivity from one group to another. For example, you might have high infectivity between schoolchildren and lower infectivity from the elderly to children. For more information, see Property-based heterogeneous disease transmission (HINT). This feature is not available in most other disease models, where heterogeneity in transmission is handled more mechanistically. For example, the malaria model simulates parasite density, mosquito populations, and biting frequency.

If you are familiar with compartmental models but new to agent-based models, we recommend reviewing the Compartmental models and EMOD section, which compares the mathematics of the differential equations that govern compartmental models with the mathematics of the EMOD agent-based model. It describes how to configure EMOD to model diseases like SI, SIR, or SEIR models.

The configuration of the model regarding infectivity, immune response, and other qualities is handled via several JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) files. For more information, see Software overview.

• Compartmental models and EMOD
  • Detailed model comparison
    • Compartmental models
    • EMOD model
      • SIR and SIRS models
        • SIR model
          • SIR without vital dynamics
          • SIR with vital dynamics
        • SIRS model
          • SIRS without vital dynamics
          • SIRS with vital dynamics
      • SEIR and SEIRS models
        • SEIR model
          • SEIR without vital dynamics
          • SEIR with vital dynamics
        • SEIRS model
          • SEIRS with vital dynamics
      • SI and SIS models
        • SI model
          • SI without vital dynamics
          • SI with vital dynamics
        • SIS
          • SIS without vital dynamics
          • SIS with vital dynamics
• Disease outbreaks, reservoirs, and endemicity
  • Outbreak events
    • Emergent outbreak
    • Endemic disease
  • Infectivity reservoirs
• Adding heterogeneity
  • Demographics
  • Vital dynamics
  • Individual and node properties
  • Transmission
  • Migration
    • Population density and transmission scaling
      • Frequency-dependent scaling
      • Density-dependent scaling
      • Saturating function of population density
    • Individual and node properties
      • Create individual properties other than age
      • Create properties for age ranges
    • Property-based heterogeneous disease transmission (HINT)
      • How to configure HINT
      • Transmission matrix
      • Detailed mathematics of HINT
        • HINT node with one individual property
        • HINT node with multiple individual properties
        • Contact scaling
    • Geographic migration
• Creating campaigns
  • Multiple interventions
  • Campaign file overview
    • Targeting interventions to nodes or individuals
      • Target to nodes based on geography
      • Target to nodes or individuals using properties
      • Illustrated examples
        • Single property, single value
        • Single property, multiple values
        • Multiple properties, individuals must match all values
        • Multiple properties, individuals must match at least one value
        • Target an age range
    • Vaccination and herd immunity
      • Multiple rounds of vaccinations
    • Cascade of care