An Interval Observer for Discrete-Time SEIR Epidemic Models

This paper focuses on designing a state estimator for a discrete-time SEIR epidemic model of an influenza-like illness. It is assumed that only sets of admissible values are known for the model's disturbances, uncertainties and parameters, except for the time-varying transmission rate from the “susceptible” to the “exposed” stage, whose bounding values are unavailable. An interval observer is designed to estimate the set of possible values of the state, and a sufficient condition guaranteeing the asymptotic stability of the proposed estimator is formulated in terms of a linear matrix inequality. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated by numerical simulations.