title: The Ebola Crisis and the Corresponding Public Behavior: A System Dynamics Approach.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The interaction of several sociocultural and environmental factors during an epidemic crisis leads to behavioral responses that consequently make the crisis control a complex problem.
  
  
  METHODS
  The system dynamics approach has been adopted to study the relationships between spread of disease, public attention, situational awareness, and community's response to the Ebola epidemic.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In developing different simulation models to capture the trend of death and incidence data from the World Health Organization for the Ebola outbreak, the final model has the best fit to the historical trends. Results demonstrate that the increase of quarantining rate over time due to increase in situational awareness and performing safe burials had a significant impact on the control of epidemic. However, public attention did not play a significant role.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The best fit to historical data are achieved when behavioral factors specific to West Africa like studying the Situational Awareness and Public Attention are included in the model. However, by ignoring the sociocultural factors, the model is not able to represent the reality; therefore, in the case of any epidemics, it is necessary that all the parties and community members find the most significant behavioral factors that can curb the epidemic.
authors.affiliation: Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Nasser
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sharareh
authors.affiliation: Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Nasim
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: S Sabounchi
authors.affiliation: Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sayama
authors.affiliation: Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Roderick
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: MacDonald