Related papers: Beyond just "flattening the curve": Optimal contro…
Mass public quarantining, colloquially known as a lock-down, is a non-pharmaceutical intervention to check spread of disease. This paper presents ESOP (Epidemiologically and Socio-economically Optimal Policies), a novel application of…
Some basic facts that enable or constrain efforts to "flatten the curve" by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are summarized and placed in the current context of the COVID-19 epidemic. Analytical formulas are presented for a simple…
The COVID-19 pandemic left its unique mark on the 21st century as one of the most significant disasters in history, triggering governments all over the world to respond with a wide range of interventions. However, these restrictions come…
We present a new mathematical model to explicitly capture the effects that the three restriction measures: the lockdown date and duration, social distancing and masks, and, schools and border closing, have in controlling the spread of…
We design and analyze a multi-level game-theoretic model of hierarchical policy interventions for epidemic control, such as those in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our model captures the potentially mismatched priorities among a…
We study the problem of optimal control of the stochastic SIR model. Models of this type are used in mathematical epidemiology to capture the time evolution of highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Our approach relies on…
This research introduces a new approach utilizing optimal control theory (OCT) to assess the Social Optimum (SO) of a vaccination game, navigating the intricate considerations of cost, availability, and distribution policies. By integrating…
In this paper, we study the optimal control for an SEIR model adapted to the vaccination strategy of susceptible individuals. There are factors associated with a vaccination campaign that make this strategy not only a public health issue…
We consider the control of the COVID-19 pandemic through a standard SIR compartmental model. This control is induced by the aggregation of individuals' decisions to limit their social interactions: when the epidemic is ongoing, an…
Contagious diseases can spread quickly in human populations, either through airborne transmission or if some other spreading vectors are abundantly accessible. They can be particularly devastating if the impact on individuals' health has…
We study the impact of model parameter uncertainty on optimally mitigating the spread of epidemics. We capture the epidemic spreading process using a susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) epidemic model and consider testing for isolation as…
Developing robust, quantitative methods to optimize resource allocations in response to epidemics has the potential to save lives and minimize health care costs. In this paper, we develop and apply a computationally efficient algorithm that…
In this paper, we address a social planner's optimal control problem for a partially observable stochastic epidemic model. The control measures include social distancing, testing, and vaccination. Using a diffusion approximation for the…
The design of an efficient curing policy, able to stem an epidemic process at an affordable cost, has to account for the structure of the population contact network supporting the contagious process. Thus, we tackle the problem of…
Optimal control problems reflecting the finding of effective quarantine strategies are considered for two control SEIR~type models describing the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the human population. The properties of the corresponding…
The non-population conserving SIR (SIR-NC) model to describe the spread of infections in a community is proposed and studied. Unlike the standard SIR model, SIR-NC does not assume population conservation. Although similar in form to the…
While many efforts are currently devoted to vaccines development and administration, social distancing measures, including severe restrictions such as lockdowns, remain fundamental tools to contain the spread of COVID-19. A crucial point…
This paper considers the problem of designing time-dependent, real-time control policies for controllable nonlinear diffusion processes, with the goal of obtaining maximally-informative observations about parameters of interest. More…
Given maximal social distancing duration and intensity, how can one minimize the epidemic final size, or equivalently the total number of individuals infected during the outbreak? A complete answer to this question is provided and…
The mathematical interpretation of interventions for the mitigation of epidemics and pandemics in the literature often involves finding the optimal time to initiate an intervention and/or the use of infections to manage impact. Whilst these…