Over the last years, an intensive worldwide effort is speeding
up the developments in the establishment of a global
surveillance network for combating pandemics of emergent
and re-emergent infectious diseases. Scientists from different
fields extending from medicine and molecular biology to
computer science and applied mathematics have teamed up
for rapid assessment of potentially urgent situations. Toward
this aim mathematical modeling plays an important role in
efforts that focus on predicting, assessing, and controlling
potential outbreaks. To better understand and model the
contagious dynamics the impact of numerous variables
ranging from the micro host–pathogen level to host-to-host
interactions, as well as prevailing ecological, social, economic,
and demographic factors across the globe have to be analyzed
and thoroughly studied. Here, we present and discuss the main
approaches that are used for the surveillance and modeling of
infectious disease dynamics. We present the basic concepts
underpinning their implementation and practice and for each
category we give an annotated list of representative works.