# Some Remarks about the Complexity of Epidemics Management

## TL;DR

This paper discusses the increased complexity in epidemic management models, emphasizing the need for extended models that incorporate management loops, frictions, and robustness measures, which complicate analysis and optimization.

## Contribution

It introduces extended epidemic management models that include management loops and frictions, highlighting their impact on structural and computational complexity.

## Key findings

- Increased structural complexity from model extensions.
- Higher computational complexity in optimization tasks.
- Pre-processing may be needed for analysis simplification.

## Abstract

Recent outbreaks of Ebola, H1N1 and other infectious diseases have shown that the assumptions underlying the established theory of epidemics management are too idealistic. For an improvement of procedures and organizations involved in fighting epidemics, extended models of epidemics management are required. The necessary extensions consist in a representation of the management loop and the potential frictions influencing the loop. The effects of the non-deterministic frictions can be taken into account by including the measures of robustness and risk in the assessment of management options. Thus, besides of the increased structural complexity resulting from the model extensions, the computational complexity of the task of epidemics management - interpreted as an optimization problem - is increased as well. This is a serious obstacle for analyzing the model and may require an additional pre-processing enabling a simplification of the analysis process. The paper closes with an outlook discussing some forthcoming problems.