The diffusion of COVID-19 represents a real threat for the health and economic system of a country. Therefore the governments have to adopt fast containment measures in order to stop its spread and to prevent the related devastating consequences. In this paper, a technique is proposed to optimally design the lock-down and reopening policies so as to minimize an aggregate cost function accounting for the number of individuals that decease due to the spread of COVID-19. A constraint on the maximal number of concomitant infected patients is also taken into account in order to prevent the collapse of the health system. The optimal procedure is built on the basis of a simple SIR model that describes the outbreak of a generic disease, without attempting to accurately reproduce all the COVID-19 epidemic features. This modeling choice is motivated by the fact that the containing measurements are actuated during the very first period of the outbreak, when the characteristics of the new emergent disease are not known but timely containment actions are required. In fact, as a consequence of dealing with poor preliminary data, the simplest modeling choice is able to reduce unidentifiability problems. Further, the relative simplicity of this model allows to compute explicitly its solutions and to derive closed-form expressions for the maximum number of infected and for the steady-state value of deceased individuals. These expressions can be then used to design static optimization problems so to determine the (open-loop) optimal lock-down and reopening policies for early-stage epidemics accounting for both the health and economic costs.

Borri, A., Palumbo, P., Papa, F., Possieri, C. (2021). Optimal design of lock-down and reopening policies for early-stage epidemics through SIR-D models. ANNUAL REVIEWS IN CONTROL, 51, 511-524 [10.1016/j.arcontrol.2020.12.002].

Optimal design of lock-down and reopening policies for early-stage epidemics through SIR-D models

Palumbo P.;
2021

Abstract

The diffusion of COVID-19 represents a real threat for the health and economic system of a country. Therefore the governments have to adopt fast containment measures in order to stop its spread and to prevent the related devastating consequences. In this paper, a technique is proposed to optimally design the lock-down and reopening policies so as to minimize an aggregate cost function accounting for the number of individuals that decease due to the spread of COVID-19. A constraint on the maximal number of concomitant infected patients is also taken into account in order to prevent the collapse of the health system. The optimal procedure is built on the basis of a simple SIR model that describes the outbreak of a generic disease, without attempting to accurately reproduce all the COVID-19 epidemic features. This modeling choice is motivated by the fact that the containing measurements are actuated during the very first period of the outbreak, when the characteristics of the new emergent disease are not known but timely containment actions are required. In fact, as a consequence of dealing with poor preliminary data, the simplest modeling choice is able to reduce unidentifiability problems. Further, the relative simplicity of this model allows to compute explicitly its solutions and to derive closed-form expressions for the maximum number of infected and for the steady-state value of deceased individuals. These expressions can be then used to design static optimization problems so to determine the (open-loop) optimal lock-down and reopening policies for early-stage epidemics accounting for both the health and economic costs.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Mathematical modeling; Optimal control; Epidemiology;
English
23-dic-2020
2021
51
511
524
reserved
Borri, A., Palumbo, P., Papa, F., Possieri, C. (2021). Optimal design of lock-down and reopening policies for early-stage epidemics through SIR-D models. ANNUAL REVIEWS IN CONTROL, 51, 511-524 [10.1016/j.arcontrol.2020.12.002].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/347511
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