De Angelis M, Durastanti C, Giovannoni M, Moretti L. Spatio-temporal distribution pattern of COVID-19 in the Northern Italy during the first-wave scenario: The role of the highway network.
Transp Res Interdiscip Perspect 2022;
15:100646. [PMID:
35782786 PMCID:
PMC9234024 DOI:
10.1016/j.trip.2022.100646]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Revised: 04/05/2022] [Accepted: 06/22/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND
The rapid outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed several challenges to the scientific community. The goal of this paper is to investigate the spread of COVID-19 in Northern Italy during the so-called first wave scenario and to provide a qualitative comparison with the local highway net.
METHODS
Fixed a grid of days from February 27, 2020, the cumulative numbers of infections in each considered province have been compared to sequences of thresholds. As a consequence, a time-evolving classification of the state of danger in terms of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, in view of the smallest threshold overtaken by this comparison, has been obtained for each considered province. The provinces with a significant amount of cases have then been collected into matrices containing only the ones featuring a significant amount of cases.
RESULTS
The time evolution of the classification has then been qualitatively compared to the highway network, to identify similarities and thus linking the rapid spreading of COVID-19 and the highway connections.
CONCLUSIONS
The obtained results demonstrate how the proposed model properly fits with the spread of COVID-19 along with the Italian highway transport network and could be implemented to analyze qualitatively other disease transmissions in different contexts and time periods.
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