Combining fitting of spatio-temporal mechanistic models and optimization algorithms to hierarchize targeted control operations

[rocheben]

One crucial thing that public health authorities expect from modelers is to improve control strategies during outbreaks. Then, it would be very useful to combine, within a new package, methods doing real-time fitting of mechanistic models and optimization strategies (such as GA) to identify when and where control operations should be performed in priority to decrease outbreak propagation and amplitude. I propose to focus first on vaccine-preventable diseases or arboviruses (for which interventions are maybe easier to implement)

[dirkschumacher]

Nice idea. I am a big fan of combinatorial optimization and would be happy to help.

[mhoehle]

Not sure you need real-time fitting to come up with something useful here - unless you are thinking about handling emerging outbreaks? Often, you want to go through 2-3 alternatives and then evaluate, which option is best based on a predefined metric (few sick, few health cost of those sick, etc). Unless you want to optimize the timing of intervention measures - there some work has been done in, e.g., pig production - see e.g. chapter 3 of http://www.prodstyr.ihh.kvl.dk/pub/phd/nt_thesis.pdf