Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Civil

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Civil & Environmental Engineering department looked at the 40 largest U.S. airports & figured out which of them would be the most likely to spread a disease in the event of an outbreak in the cities they serve.
They factored in passengers' travel patterns, the airports' geographic locations, interactions between airports & even passenger waiting times for their study, published July 19 in the journal PLoS ONE.
 of the surprises in their findings was that an airport's rating on the researchers' list was not necessarily tied to its size or busyness.
While John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York & Los Angeles International Airport were first & second on the list, respectively, Honolulu International Airport ranked third, although it carries only 30% as much traffic as Kennedy.
The researchers said that is because of Honolulu's place in the air transportation network: in the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of connections to distant, giant, & well-connected hubs.
Though Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ranks first in the number of flights, it was eighth on the researchers' list of potential disease spreaders. Boston Logan International Airport ranked 15th.


Following Kennedy, Los Angeles and Honolulu on the list are San Francisco International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport. Atlanta, Miami International Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport round out the top ten.
Public health crises of the past decade, like SARS in 2003 or the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, have highlighted how simple it is for diseases to spread around the globe, including through air travel.
But existing models, the researchers said, look only at the final stages of an epidemic and the places that ultimately create the highest infection rates.
The researchers say the new model can help choose ways to contain an infection in a specific area, and can also help public health officials made decisions about treatment and vaccines in the early days of a contagion.