[MUSIC PLAYING]
In a new study, researchers in MIT'S Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering
use network theory to understand how infectious diseases could
spread worldwide through air transportation.
Researchers built a model to describe the mobility patterns
of individual travelers, and derived a metric
to rank and predict which airports in the United States
would be the most influential spreaders of disease
within the first 15 days of an outbreak.
In this animation, you can see the daily connecting flights
to and from all U.S. airports.
Some highly connected airports, such as Anchorage,
are powerful regional spreaders.
Others, such as Honolulu. , owe their spreading potential
to their geographic location.
The global super spreaders, such as JFK and LAX,
combine all those elements.
Connectivity, traffic and geography.