Effect of Noise on the Pattern Formation in an Epidemic Model

We present novel numerical evidence of complicated phenomenon controlled by noise in a spatial epidemic model. The number of the spot is decreased as the noise intensity being increased, which we show by performing a series of numerical simulations. Moreover, when the noise intensity and temporal correlation are both large enough, the model dynamics exhibits a noise controlled transition from spotted pattern to stripe growth. In addition to that, we show in details the number of the spotted and stripe pattern, with the identification of a wide lime of noise intensity and temporal correlation. The obtained results show that noise plays an important role in the pattern formation of the epidemic model, which may provide guidance to prevent and control the spread of disease. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Ey 26: 1168-1179, 2010