Feedback control problem of an SIR epidemic model based on the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation

Abstract

We consider a feedback control problem of a susceptible-infective-recovered (SIR) model to design an efficient vaccination strategy for influenza outbreaks. We formulate an optimal control problem that minimizes the number of people who become infected, as well as the costs of vaccination. A feedback methodology based on the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation is introduced to derive the control function. We describe the viscosity solution, which is an approximation solution of the HJB equation. A successive approximation method combined with the upwind finite difference method is discussed to find the viscosity solution. The numerical simulations show that feedback control can help determine the vaccine policy for any combination of susceptible individuals and infectious individuals. We also verify that feedback control can immediately reflect changes in the number of susceptible and infectious individuals.

Keywords

• sir model
• feedback control problem
• hamilton-jacobi-bellman (hjb) equation
• upwind finite difference method