Internet game provides breakthrough in predicting the spread of epidemics
Thursday, February 2, 2006, 02:09 PM - Games
Searching for a way to model the modern spread of disease became the focus of discussions among the co-authors: Theo Geisel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization and professor at the University of Goettingen; Dirk Brockmann, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization; and Hufnagel. Following a conference in Montreal, Brockmann met with a friend in Vermont, a cabinetmaker, who showed him the internet game for tracking the movement of dollar bills, located at www.wheresgeorge.com. Participants can register a dollar bill, of any denomination, and monitor its geographic circulation.
The physicists were intrigued: Like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place. They found that the human movements follow what are known as universal scaling laws (from local to regional to long-distance scales). Using the game data, they developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics.
Blink!
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