Reducing in fl uenza spreading over the airline network.

Disease spreading through human travel networks has been a topic of great interest in recent years, such as with swine in fl uenza or SARS pandemics. Most studies have proposed removing highly connected nodes (hubs) to control spreading. Here, we test alternative strategies using edge removal ( fl ight cancellation) for spreading over the airline network. Flight cancellation was more ef fi cient than shutting down whole airports: spreading took 81% longer if solely selected fl ights were removed, compared to a 52% reduction when entire airports were shutdown, affecting the same number of fl ights.