BCAM Scientific Seminar: On the origin of complex dynamics in multi-strain dengue models

Abstract:
Dengue fever epidemiological dynamics shows large fluctuations in disease incidence, and several mathematical models describing the transmission of dengue viruses have been proposed to explain the irregular behaviour of dengue epidemics. Multi-strain dengue models are often modelled with SIR-type models where the SIR classes are labelled for the hosts that have seen the individual strains. The extended models show complex dynamics and qualitatively a very good result when comparing empirical data and model simulations. However, modeling insights for epidemiological scenarios characterized by chaotic dynamics, such as for dengue fever epidemiology, have been largely unexplored. The problem is mathematically difficult and to make the urgently needed progress in our understanding of such dynamics, concepts from various fields of mathematics as well the availability of good data for model evaluation are needed.

In this talk, I will present a set of models motivated by dengue fever epidemiology and compare different dynamical behaviours originated when increasing complexity into the model framework.

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