Epidemiological simulations with BioPEPA formal language. An application to the Italian COVID-19 epidemic

Abstract

Epidemiological models played a crucial role during SASR-CoV-2 pandemic to assist policymaker authorities in the roll-out of non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as lockdown, limitations to individual's mobility and mask wearing), and vaccination campaigns. The formal language BioPEPA offers a tool to compare different stochastic and deterministic solvers for the simulation of an epidemic. This thesis explores the possibility of using BioPEPA to simulate the Italian COVID-19 pandemic considering different risk classes among the population. In particular, the thesis will focus on the simulation of the Italian vaccination campaign that started in December 2020, where priority was given to healthcare workers, and elderly individuals having a higher risk of serious symptoms and death. This study aims to show how objective model simulations can support the risk evaluation.