Modeling a decision support system for Covid-19 using systems dynamics and fuzzy inference

Covid-19 has impacted the lives of people across the world with deaths and unprecedented economic damage. Countries have employed various restrictions and lockdowns to slow down the rate of its spread with varying degrees of success. This research aims to propose an optimal strategy for dealing with a pandemic taking the deaths and economy into account. A complete lockdown until vaccination is not suitable as it can destroy the economy, whereas having no restrictions would result in more Covid-19 cases. Therefore, there is a need for a dynamic model which can propose a suitable strategy depending on the economic and health situation. This paper discusses an approach involving a systems dynamics model for evaluating deaths and hospitals and a fuzzy inference system for deciding the strategy for the next time period based on pre-defined rules. We estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a sum of government spending, investment, consumption, and spending. The resulting hybrid framework aims to attain a balance between health and economy during a pandemic. The results from a 30-week simulation indicate that the model has 2.9 million $ in GDP higher than complete lockdown and 21 fewer deaths compared to a scenario with no restrictions. The model can be used for the decision-making of restriction policies by configuring the fuzzy rules and membership functions. The paper also discusses the possibility of introducing virus variants in the model.