Well-posedness results for a new class of stochastic spatio-temporal SIR-type models driven by proportional pure-jump Lévy noise

This paper provides a first attempt to incorporate the massive discontinuous changes in the spatio-temporal dynamics of epidemics. Namely, we propose an extended class of epidemic models, governed by coupled stochastic semilinear partial differential equations, driven by pure-jump Levy noise. Based on the considered type of incidence functions, by virtue of semigroup theory, a truncation technique and Banach fixed point theorem, we prove the existence and pathwise uniqueness of mild solutions, depending continuously on the initial datum. Moreover, by means of a regularization technique, based on the resolvent operator, we acquire that mild solutions can be approximated by a suitable converging sequence of strong solutions. With this result at hand, for positive initial states, we derive the almost-sure positiveness of the obtained solutions. Finally, we present the outcome of several numerical simulations, in order to exhibit the effect of the considered type of stochastic noise, in comparison to Gaussian noise, which has been used in the previous literature. Our established results lay the ground-work for investigating other problems associated with the new proposed class of epidemic models, such as asymptotic behavior analyses, optimal control as well as identification problems, which primarily rely on the existence and uniqueness of biologically feasible solutions.

Automated summary

This paper presents an extended class of epidemic models and proves their existence and uniqueness using mathematical methods. Numerical simulations are conducted to compare the new models with traditional models. These results lay the groundwork for further research on other problems associated with the new proposed class of epidemic models.