Fractal signatures of the COVID-19 spread

Author(s):Show less -

Abbasi, M. ^[1] ; Bollini, A. L. ^[1] ; Castillo, J. L. B. ^[1] ; Deppman, A. ^[1] ; Guidio, J. P. ^[1] ; Matuoka, P. T. ^[1] ; Meirelles, A. D. ^[1] ; Policarpo, J. M. P. ^[1] ; Ramos, A. . A. . G. F. ^[1] ; Simionatto, S. ^[1] ; Varona, A. R. P. ^[1] ; Andrade-, II, E. ; Panjeh, H. ^[2] ; Trevisan, L. A. ^[3]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Fis, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[2] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Matemat & Estat, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[3] Univ Estadual Ponta Grossa, Ponta Grossa, Parana - Brazil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS; v. 140, NOV 2020.
• Web of Science Citations: 0

Abstract

Recent quantitative approaches for studying several aspects of urban life and infrastructure have shown that scale properties allow the understanding of many features of urban infrastructure and of human activity in cities. In this paper, we show that COVID-19 virus contamination follows a similar pattern in different regions of the world. The superlinear power-law behavior for the number of contamination cases as a function of the city population, with exponent beta of the order of 1.15 is always obtained. Due to the strong indication that scaling is a determinant feature of covid-19 spread, we propose an epidemiological model that embodies a fractal structure, allowing a more detailed description of the observed data about the virus spread in different countries and regions. The hypothesis that fractal structures can be formed in cities as well as in larger networks is tested, indicating that indeed self-similarity may be found in networks connecting several cities. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/17612-7 - Dynamics of many-body systems IV
• Grantee: Arnaldo Gammal
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants