Investigating and identifying critical airports for controlling infectious diseases outbreaks

Abstract

The enormous economic impact of air transportation networks on a local, national, and international level has created an interest for further investments and increased the complexity of the global air transport network. The increased number of worldwide airport passengers and of the aircraft movements and also of the international airport cargo shipments is evident. Therefore, the functionality of this complex air transport network is very important and requires to be investigated and evaluated for identifying the airports that appear to be critical to this network. However, besides the economic benefits that air transport network is offering in local, national and international level through their services (shipments of goods and transport of passengers) play an ever-increasing role in safeguarding global health security. This paper investigated the global air transport network for identifying the airports that may constitute a public health event of international concern from infectious diseases (e.g. COVID-19). In detail, critical airports, in terms of centrality measures (e.g. Closeness, Degree, Betweenness, and Page Rank Centrality) were identified and addressed by pointing them to global authorities for suggesting and implementing routine prevention and control measures for possible future disease outbreaks.