A Fokker-Planck Framework for Control of Epidemics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a control framework based on Fokker-Planck equations for managing stochastic epidemiological models, enabling robust control under uncertainty in dynamics and initial data.

Contribution

It formulates and analyzes a PDE-constrained optimization approach for controlling epidemic spread, including existence proofs and numerical solution methods.

Findings

Demonstrated control of a stochastic SIR model using the proposed framework.

Validated the approach with different policy-oriented cost functionals.

Provided a numerical method for approximating optimal controls.

Abstract

We present a control framework for stochastic compartmental models in epidemiology. In this framework, rather than directly controlling the stochastic system, we perform optimal control of an associated Fokker-Planck equation, with the goal of steering the distribution of possible solutions of the stochastic system to some desirable state. In particular, this allows for robust control mechanism with uncertainty not only in the dynamics, but also in the initial data. We formulate and fully analyze a partial differential equation constrained optimization problem, including a proof of existence of optimal controls via analysis of the control-to-state map, and a characterization of optimal controls via the Pontryagin minimum principle. We describe the application of the sequential quadratic Hamiltonian method to our problem, which provides numerical approximations of optimal control maps. We demonstrate our method using a minimal stochastic susceptible-infected-recovered model with different choices of cost functionals that represent different policy-maker concerns.