Learning to build network-oriented epidemic simulation models in epidemiology education

Epidemic simulations and intervention strategy assessments are attracting interest in light of recent and potential outbreaks of infectious diseases such as SARS and avian flu. Universities are using computational modelling and simulation tools to teach epidemiology concepts to students, but integrating domain-specific knowledge and building network-based simulation models are difficult tasks in terms of teacher preparation and learner evaluation. To illustrate challenges to creating network-oriented models in epidemiology education, we introduce an architecture based on demographic and geographic data for building network-oriented epidemic simulation models, and describe our experiences simulating the transmission dynamics of three infectious diseases in Taiwan.