Mr Axel Ahmer

Office: 721 |

Honours thesis

Modelling infectious diseases with cellular automaton

Infectious diseases are an ever-present threat to the wellbeing of humans, animals and plants. Such diseases are modelled mathematically, which allows for targeted control measures to be implemented more efficiently. By reviewing current theories behind continuous epidemeological models, we hope to create a new, robust cellular automata (CA) algorithm that is capable of graphically describing the spread of an infection within a closed population of agents. The CA algorithm created alongside this paper was governed by two cell-scale rules: the infection transmission; and the cell motility. Both rules are analysed and reasoned in this paper, as well as the algorithm in its entirety. The robust nature of this paper provides an excellent building block for additional work and experimentation due to the strong cell-cell interaction mechanics and converging analytical results.