Diseases spread over temporal networks of interaction events between individuals. Structures of these temporal networks hold the keys to understanding epidemic propagation. One early concept of the literature to aid in discussing these structures is concurrency—quantifying individuals’ tendency to form time-overlapping ‘partnerships’. Although conflicting evaluations and an overabundance of operational definitions have marred the history of concurrency, it remains important, especially in the area of sexually transmitted infections. Today, much of theoretical epidemiology uses more direct models of contact patterns, and there is an emerging body of literature trying to connect methods to the concurrency literature. In this review, we will cover the development of the concept of concurrency and these new approaches.

疾病通过个体之间相互作用事件的时间网络传播。这些时间网络的结构是理解流行病传播的关键。帮助讨论这些结构的文献的一个早期概念是并发性——量化个人形成时间重叠的“伙伴关系”的倾向。尽管相互矛盾的评估和过多的操作定义损害了并发的历史，但它仍然很重要，特别是在性传播感染领域。如今，许多理论流行病学都使用更直接的接触模式模型，并且有大量新兴文献试图将方法与并发文献联系起来。在本次回顾中，我们将介绍并发概念的发展和这些新方法。