Baselines for prioritization of epidemic control

Poster at IEW13 (Foz do Iguassu, Brazil, 9th April 2024) 

The resources available to stakeholders managing disease epidemics across plant, animal and human systems are limited. Optimization techniques can guide stakeholders on where and when these resources should be allocated to maximize their impact but different optimisation approaches are demonstrated on different systems which makes it difficult determine the current state of the art for any new system of interest. This limits both progress in the field and applicability for managers. We propose that a wider range of simple heuristic controls should be considered as baselines for evaluation of more complex control approaches and the validity of the optimisation assumptions should be tested when feasible. The utility of simple baselines is demonstrated with an example evaluating continuous optimal control on a stochastic metapopulation model of geographical spread of a plant disease.