LAUSR

ABSTRACT International communication and global cooperation have greatly accelerated the worldwide spread of dengue fever, increasing the impact of imported cases on dengue outbreaks in non-naturally endemic areas. Existing studies mostly focus on describing the quantitative relationship between imported cases and local transmission but ignore the space-time diffusion mode of imported cases under the influence of individual mobility. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework at a fine scale to establish the disease transmission network and a mathematical model, which constructs ‘source-sink’ links between the imported and indigenous cases on a regular grid with a spatial resolution of 1 km to explore the diffusion pattern and spatiotemporal heterogeneity of imported cases. An application to Guangzhou, China, reveals the main flow and transmission path of imported cases under the influence of human movement and identifies the spatiotemporal distribution of transmission speed according to the time lag of each source-sink link. In addition, we demonstrate that using individual-based movement data and socio-economic factors to study human mobility and imported cases can help to understand the driving forces of dengue spread. Our research provides a comprehensive framework for the analysis of early dengue transmission patterns with benefits to similar urban applications.