Modeling the spread of the Zika virus using topological data analysis

Understand

Zika virus (ZIKV), a disease spread primarily through the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was identified in Brazil in 2015 and was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO).

• Epidemiologists often use common state-level attributes such as population density and temperature to determine the spread of disease.
• By applying techniques from topological data analysis, we believe that epidemiologists will be able to better predict how ZIKV will spread.
• We use the Vietoris-Rips filtration on high-density mosquito locations in Brazil to create simplicial complexes, from which we extract homology group generators.