Tipping points of evolving epidemiological networks: Machine learning-assisted, data-driven effective modeling

We study the tipping point collective dynamics of an adaptive susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemiological network in a data-driven, machine learning-assisted manner. We identify a parameter-dependent effective stochastic differential equation (eSDE) in terms of physically meaningful coarse mean-field variables through a deep-learning ResNet architecture inspired by numerical stochastic integrators. We construct an approximate effective bifurcation diagram based on the identified drift term of the eSDE and contrast it with the mean-field SIS model bifurcation diagram. We observe a subcritical Hopf bifurcation in the evolving network’s effective SIS dynamics that causes the tipping point behavior; this takes the form of large amplitude collective oscillations that spontaneously—yet rarely—arise from the neighborhood of a (noisy) stationary state. We study the statistics of these rare events both through repeated brute force simulations and by using established mathematical/computational tools exploiting the right-hand side of the identified SDE. We demonstrate that such a collective SDE can also be identified (and the rare event computations also performed) in terms of data-driven coarse observables, obtained here via manifold learning techniques, in particular, Diffusion Maps. The workflow of our study is straightforwardly applicable to other complex dynamic problems exhibiting tipping point dynamics.