Epidemic Modeling and Control: An ARX Approach for Measles Containment

Measles is one of the most dangerous epidemic disease for its high reproduction number and the possible complications on already weakened patients. Effective vaccination is available since the early 60s and a suit able vaccination campaign could interrupt this epidemic disease. The most common approach for the disease description considers compartmental models, effective but requiring the identification of model parameters, generally data consuming. A different approach is data driven, that is it consideres autoregressive modeling with exogenous input. The autoregressive modeling is here considered describing measles evolution by using measurable available information, like the number of infected patients and the percentage of vaccinated indi viduals. A penalized control is herein determined, thus taking into account also limitation in control actions. Numerical results, based on available real data, show the effectivenes of the approach.