  Bus transportation is considered as one of the most convenient and cheapest
modes of public transportation in Indian cities. Due to their
cost-effectiveness and wide reachability, they help a significant portion of
the human population in cities to reach their destinations every day. Although
from a transportation point of view they have numerous advantages over other
modes of public transportation, they also pose a serious threat of contagious
diseases spreading throughout the city. The presence of numerous local spatial
constraints makes the process and extent of epidemic spreading extremely
difficult to predict. Also, majority of the studies have focused on the
contagion processes on scale-free network topologies whereas,
spatially-constrained real-world networks such as, bus networks exhibit a
wide-spectrum of network topology. Therefore, we aim in this study to
understand this complex dynamical process of epidemic outbreak and information
diffusion on the bus networks for six different Indian cities using SI and SIR
models. This will allow us to identify epidemic thresholds for these networks
which will help us in controlling outbreaks by developing node-based
immunization techniques.
