title: Six challenges in measuring contact networks for use in modelling.
abstract: Contact networks are playing an increasingly important role in epidemiology. A contact network represents individuals in a host population as nodes and the interactions among them that may lead to the transmission of infection as edges. New avenues for data collection in recent years have afforded us the opportunity to collect individual- and population-scale information to empirically describe the patterns of contact within host populations. Here, we present some of the current challenges in measuring empirical contact networks. We address fundamental questions such as defining contact; measurement of non-trivial contact properties; practical issues of bounding measurement of contact networks in space, time and scope; exploiting proxy information about contacts; dealing with missing data. Finally, we consider the privacy and ethical issues surrounding the collection of contact network data.
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK. Electronic address: ken.eames@lshtm.ac.uk.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Eames
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA; Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20893, USA. Electronic address: shweta@sbansal.com.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bansal
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ES, UK. Electronic address: sdf22@cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Frost
authors.affiliation: MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, Norfolk Place, London W21PG, UK. Electronic address: s.riley@imperial.ac.uk.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Riley
mesh_terms: D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission*; D016358:Contact Tracing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003625:Data Collection; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012944:Social Support; D062206:Spatial Analysis; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Contact patterns; Disease transmission; Mathematical modelling; Model-driven data collection; Network measurement; Networks