Hierarchical Structures in Livestock Trade Networks—A Stochastic Block Model of the German Cattle Trade Network

Trade of cattle between farms forms a complex trade network. We investigate partitions of this network for cattle trade in Germany. These partitions are groups of farms with similar properties and they are inferred directly from the trade pattern between farms. We make use of a rather new method known as stochastic block modeling (SBM) in order to divide the network into smaller units. SBM turns out to outperform the more established community detection method in the context of disease control in terms of trade restriction. Moreover, SBM is also superior to geographical based trade restrictions and could be a promising approach for disease control.

Metadaten
Author:	Laura Brzoska, Mareike Fischer, Hartmut H. K. Lentz
URN:	urn:nbn:de:gbv:9-opus-38857
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.00281
ISSN:	2297-1769
Parent Title (English):	Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Publisher:	Frontiers Media S.A.
Document Type:	Article
Language:	English
Date of first Publication:	2020/05/27
Release Date:	2020/10/18
Tag:	Germany; cattle trade; epidemic model; modularity; network analysis; stochastic block model
GND Keyword:	-
Volume:	7
Faculties:	Universitätsmedizin / Institut für Epidemiologie u. Sozialmedizin
Licence (German):	Creative Commons - Namensnennung

Open Access