Set-membership estimations for the evolution of infectious diseases in heterogeneous populations

The paper presents an approach for set-membership estimation of the state of a heterogeneous population in which an infectious disease is spreading. The population state may consist of susceptible, infected, recovered, etc. groups, where the individuals are heterogeneous with respect to traits, relevant to the particular disease. Set-membership estimations in this context are reasonable, since only vague information about the distribution of the population along the space of heterogeneity is available in practice. The presented approach comprises adapted versions of methods which are known in estimation and control theory, and involve solving parametrized families of optimization problems. Since the models of disease spreading in heterogeneous populations involve distributed systems (with non-local dynamics and endogenous boundary conditions), these problems are non-standard. The paper develops the needed theoretical instruments and a solution scheme. SI and SIR models of epidemic diseases are considered as case studies and the results reveal qualitative properties that may be of interest.Austrian Science Foundation (FWF

On some open problems in optimal control

Several open problems are presented concerning regularity properties of solutions of optimal control problems with constraints

Optimal Cyclic Exploitation of Renewable Resources

The paper contributes to the topic of optimal utilization of spatially distributed renewable resource. Namely, a problem of "sustainable" optimal cyclic exploitation of a renewable resource with logistic law of recovery is investigated. The resource is distributed on a circle and is collected by a single harvester moving along the circle. The recovering and harvesting rates are position dependent, and the latter depends also on the velocity of the harvester, which is considered as a control. The existnce of an optimal solution is proved, as well as necessary optimality conditions for the velocity of the harvester. On this base, a numerical approach is proposed, and some qualitative properties of the optimal solutions are established. The results are illustrated by numerical examples, which reveal some economically meaningful features of the optimal harvesting