TY - JOUR A2 - Liu, Hailin AU - Hu, Xiao-Min AU - Zhang, Jun AU - Chen, Haihong PY - 2014 DA - 2014/08/27 TI - Optimal Vaccine Distribution Strategy for Different Age Groups of Population: A Differential Evolution Algorithm Approach SP - 702973 VL - 2014 AB - Vaccination is one of the effective ways for protecting susceptible individuals from infectious diseases. Different age groups of population have different vulnerability to the disease and different contact frequencies. In order to achieve the maximum effects, the distribution of vaccine doses to the groups of individuals needs to be optimized. In this paper, a differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to address the problem. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested by a classical infectious disease transmission model and a series of simulations have been made. The results show that the proposed algorithm can always obtain the best vaccine distribution strategy which can minimize the number of infectious individuals during the epidemic outbreak. Furthermore, the effects of vaccination on different days and the vaccine coverage percentages have also been discussed. SN - 1024-123X UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/702973 DO - 10.1155/2014/702973 JF - Mathematical Problems in Engineering PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -