A Genetic Algorithm Approach to Exploring Simulation Parameters

Simulation of animal disease spread is essential for understanding and controlling the outbreak of disease among herds of livestock (in particular cattle and poultry). Using a computerized system or simulator, animal health professionals or epidemiologists often spend many hours determining the set of input parameters that most accurately represent a disease spread or an outbreak scenario. A parameter can be a simple boolean value, or a scientific or often hypothetically derived range of real numbers. Many times, an epidemiologist chooses a value provisionally in a random fashion and repeats the simulation until a viable solution is achieved. This tedious process is inefficient and lengthy. To assist and improve this laborious practice in a concise and timely manner, a Genetic Algorithm is employed to determine a population based solution consisting of input parameters using the North American Animal Disease Spread Model (NAADSM).