Feedback Control Principles for Biological Control of Dengue Vectors

TL;DR

This paper explores control theory principles to develop effective release strategies for Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes, aiming to reduce the spread of dengue and similar diseases, by addressing uncertainties in population dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces general feedback control principles for biological vector control, exemplified through interval observer-based laws applied to mosquito population models.

Findings

Proposed feedback control laws stabilize mosquito populations with Wolbachia.

Control strategies are robust to uncertainties in population dynamics.

Application demonstrated on a model from prior research.

Abstract

Controlling diseases such as dengue fever, chikungunya and zika fever by introduction of the intracellular parasitic bacterium Wolbachia in mosquito populations which are their vectors, is presently quite a promising tool to reduce their spread. While description of the conditions of such experiments has received ample attention from biologists, entomologists and applied mathematicians, the issue of effective scheduling of the releases remains an interesting problem for Control theory. Having in mind the important uncertainties present in the dynamics of the two populations in interaction, we attempt here to identify general ideas for building release strategies, which should apply to several models and situations. These principles are exemplified by two interval observer-based feedback control laws whose stabilizing properties are demonstrated when applied to a model retrieved from [Bliman et al., 2018]. Crucial use is made of the theory of monotone dynamical systems.