Epidemic spreading on weighted complex networks

•We use the edge weight to study the dynamics of epidemic spreading on multi-relation networks.•The weight distribution on edges would not affect the epidemic results once the average weight of whole network is fixed.•We proposed a new method to determine the epidemic outbreak threshold for the simulation of SIR model.

Nowadays, the emergence of online services provides various multi-relation information to support the comprehensive understanding of the epidemic spreading process. In this Letter, we consider the edge weights to represent such multi-role relations. In addition, we perform detailed analysis of two representative metrics, outbreak threshold and epidemic prevalence, on SIS and SIR models. Both theoretical and simulation results find good agreements with each other. Furthermore, experiments show that, on fully mixed networks, the weight distribution on edges would not affect the epidemic results once the average weight of whole network is fixed. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding of epidemic spreading on multi-relation and weighted networks.