Mechanistic Models with Spatial Structures and Reactive Behavior Change

As we have emphasized in Chaps. 4 and 5, simple homogeneous models of transmission or growth dynamics often yield an early exponential epidemic growth phase even when the population is stratified into different groups (e.g., age, gender, regions). However, recent work has highlighted the presence of early sub-exponential growth patterns in case incidence from empirical outbreak data. This suggests that integrating detailed and often unobserved heterogeneity into simple mechanistic models could open the door to a new and exciting research area to better understand the role of heterogeneity on key transmission parameters, epidemic size, stochastic extinction, the effects of interventions, and disease forecasts.