Equilibrium and sensitivity analysis of a spatio-temporal host-vector epidemic model

Olivier Martin, Yasmil Fernandez-Diclo, Jerome Coville, Samuel Soubeyrand

Published 2020-02-18Version 1

Insect-borne diseases are diseases carried by insects affecting humans, animals or plants. They have the potential to generate massive outbreaks such as the Zika epidemic in 2015-2016 mostly distributed in the Americas, the Pacific and Southeast Asia, and the multi-foci outbreak caused by the bacterium {\it Xylella fastidiosa} in Europe in the 2010s. In this article, we propose and analyze the behavior of a spatially-explicit compartmental model adapted to pathosystems with fixed hosts and mobile vectors disseminating the disease. The behavior of this model based on a system of partial differential equations is complementarily characterized via a theoretical study of its equilibrium states and a numerical study of its transitive phase using global sensitivity analysis. The results are discussed in terms of implications concerning the surveillance and control of the disease over a medium-to-long temporal horizon.