ASIR: Robust Agent-based Representation Of SIR Model

Abstract

Compartmental models (written as $CM$) and agent-based models (written as $AM$) are dominant methods in the field of epidemic simulation. But in the literature there lacks discussion on how to build the \textbf{quantitative relationship} between them. In this paper, we propose an agent-based $SIR$ model: $ASIR$. $ASIR$ can robustly reproduce the infection curve predicted by a given SIR model (the simplest $CM$.) Notably, one can deduce any parameter of $ASIR$ from parameters of $SIR$ without manual tuning. $ASIR$ offers epidemiologists a method to transform a calibrated $SIR$ model into an agent-based model that inherit $SIR$'s performance without another round of calibration. The design $ASIR$ is inspirational for building a general quantitative relationship between $CM$ and $AM$.