On Estimating Spatial Epidemic Parameters of a Simplified Metapopulation Model

Metapopulation epidemic model describes the viral spreading between different subpopulations (cities), where the diffusion rates at which individuals, acting as viral carriers, transfer among interconnected subpopulations play a key role in affecting the spreading process. Thus a first step towards achieving better prediction or more efficient intervention of the viral spreading is to estimate such individual-mobility-related parameters. In this paper, we consider the problem of parameter identification for the metapopulation epidemic model from the time series of the infected cases number by using a maximum likelihood estimator. With the verification in two subpopulations, the agreement between analytical and numerical results verifies the validity of our method.