LIDS - An easy to use and lightweight, infectious disease simulator

Abstract

The progression of infectious diseases, biological viruses and quick spreading pathogens is difficult to analyze, forecast and prevent. Many epidemiological compartmental models have been developed over the years to predict the course of a virus and therefore prevent it from becoming a pandemic. Most of these models though can only be applied in a perfectly homogeneous environment. This paper presents LIDS, an easy to use infectious disease simulator, that combines various graph theory models and modern epidemiology with the purpose of providing a preliminary estimation on the course and progression of an infectious disease based upon a specific graph topology. The LIDS is designed to perform reproducible simulations to allow scientists and medical personnel, from different research groups and hospitals, compare various outcomes of the advancement of an infectious disease. The LIDS has been developed in a high performance programming language, it supports all mainstream operating systems, requires minimum resources and can be easily ported to smart and mobile devices. © 2021 IEEE