Synthesis of event-triggered controllers for SIRS epidemic models

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the problem of mitigating epidemics by applying an event-triggered control strategy. We consider a susceptible–infected–removed–susceptible (SIRS) model, which builds upon the foundational SIR model by accounting for reinfection cases. The event-triggered control strategy is formulated based on the condition in which the control input (e.g., the level of public measures) is updated only when the fraction of the infected subjects changes over a designed threshold. To synthesize the event-triggered controller, we leverage the notion of a symbolic model, which represents an abstracted expression of the transition system associated with the SIRS model under the event-triggered control strategy. Then, by employing safety and reachability games, two event-triggered controllers are synthesized to ensure a desired specification, which is more sophisticated than the one given in previous works. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated through numerical simulations.