In a new study, researchers in MIT'S Department

of Civil and Environmental Engineering

use network theory to understand how infectious diseases could

spread worldwide through air transportation.

Researchers built a model to describe the mobility patterns

of individual travelers, and derived a metric

to rank and predict which airports in the United States

would be the most influential spreaders of disease

within the first 15 days of an outbreak.

In this animation, you can see the daily connecting flights

to and from all U.S. airports.

Some highly connected airports, such as Anchorage,

are powerful regional spreaders.

Others, such as Honolulu. , owe their spreading potential

to their geographic location.

The global super spreaders, such as JFK and LAX,

combine all those elements.

Connectivity, traffic and geography.