Optimizing protection resource allocation for traffic-driven epidemic spreading.

Optimizing the allocation of protection resources to control the spreading process in networks is a central problem in public health and network security. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive adjustable resource allocation mechanism in which the over allocation of resources can be also numerically reflected and study the effects of this mechanism on traffic-driven epidemic spreading. We observe that an inappropriate resource allocation scheme can induce epidemic spreading, while an optimized heterogeneous resource allocation scheme can significantly suppress the outbreak of the epidemic. The phenomenon can be explained by the role of nodes induced by the heterogeneous network structure and traffic flow distribution. Theoretical analysis also gives an exact solution to the epidemic threshold and reveals the optimal allocation scheme. Compared to the uniform allocation scheme, the increase in traffic flow will aggravate the decline of the epidemic threshold for the heterogeneous resource allocation scheme. This indicates that the uneven resource allocation makes the network performance of suppressing epidemic degrade with the traffic load level. Finally, it is demonstrated that real-world network topology also confirms the results.