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The Cost of Uncertainty in Curing Epidemics

Authors:

Jessica Hoffmann,

Constantine CaramanisAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems, Volume 2, Issue 2

Article No.: 31, Pages 1 - 33

https://doi.org/10.1145/3224426

Published: 13 June 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Motivated by the study of controlling (curing) epidemics, we consider the spread of an SI process on a known graph, where we have a limited budget to use to transition infected nodes back to the susceptible state (i.e., to cure nodes). Recent work has demonstrated that under perfect and instantaneous information (which nodes are/are not infected), the budget required for curing a graph precisely depends on a combinatorial property called the CutWidth. We show that this assumption is in fact necessary: even a minor degradation of perfect information, e.g., a diagnostic test that is 99% accurate, drastically alters the landscape. Infections that could previously be cured in sublinear time now may require exponential time, or orderwise larger budget to cure. The crux of the issue comes down to a tension not present in the full information case: if a node is suspected (but not certain) to be infected, do we risk wasting our budget to try to cure an uninfected node, or increase our certainty by longer observation, at the risk that the infection spreads further? Our results present fundamental, algorithm-independent bounds that tradeoff budget required vs. uncertainty.

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Cited By

Ou HChen HJabbari STambe MDignum FLomuscio AEndriss UNowé A(2021)Active Screening for Recurrent Diseases: A Reinforcement Learning ApproachProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems10.5555/3463952.3464068(992-1000)Online publication date: 3-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3463952.3464068
Capobianco RKompella VAult JSharon GJong SFox SMeyers LWurman PStone P(2021)Agent-Based Markov Modeling for Improved COVID-19 Mitigation PoliciesJournal of Artificial Intelligence Research10.1613/jair.1.1263271(953-992)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1613/jair.1.12632
Ou HSinha ASuen SPerrault ARaval ATambe MEl Fallah Seghrouchni ASukthankar GAn BYorke-Smith N(2020)Who and When to ScreenProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems10.5555/3398761.3398877(992-1000)Online publication date: 5-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3398761.3398877

Index Terms

The Cost of Uncertainty in Curing Epidemics
1. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Process control systems
2. Mathematics of computing
  1. Discrete mathematics
    1. Graph theory
      1. Graph algorithms
      2. Network flows
  2. Probability and statistics
    1. Stochastic processes

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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems Volume 2, Issue 2

June 2018

370 pages

EISSN:2476-1249

DOI:10.1145/3232754

Editors:
Augustin Chaintreau
Columbia University
,
Aditya Akella
University of Wisconsin-Madison
,
Adam Wierman
California Institute of Technology

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 13 June 2018

Published in POMACS Volume 2, Issue 2

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Cited By

Ou HChen HJabbari STambe MDignum FLomuscio AEndriss UNowé A(2021)Active Screening for Recurrent Diseases: A Reinforcement Learning ApproachProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems10.5555/3463952.3464068(992-1000)Online publication date: 3-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3463952.3464068
Capobianco RKompella VAult JSharon GJong SFox SMeyers LWurman PStone P(2021)Agent-Based Markov Modeling for Improved COVID-19 Mitigation PoliciesJournal of Artificial Intelligence Research10.1613/jair.1.1263271(953-992)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1613/jair.1.12632
Ou HSinha ASuen SPerrault ARaval ATambe MEl Fallah Seghrouchni ASukthankar GAn BYorke-Smith N(2020)Who and When to ScreenProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems10.5555/3398761.3398877(992-1000)Online publication date: 5-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3398761.3398877

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