Project period: 07/2008 - 07/2011
Principal investigator: Dr. Oliver Mason, Hamilton Institute, NUI Maynooth, Irland
Sponsorship: Science Foundation Ireland
Thematic area: non-autonomous systems

Dynamical systems leaving the non-negative orthant invariant are of considerable practical importance due to their applications in Biology, Ecology, Economics, Communications, to name a few areas. Systems of this type are known as positive systems and have been studied extensively in the literature. In particular, the theory of linear time-invariant positive systems is now well developed and much recent work has been directed towards extending this theory to broader system classes such as integro-differential equations, while the properties of switched positive systems have been studied. As many of the applications of positive systems give rise to nonlinear systems, it is natural to look for extensions of the theory suitable classes. In the project, a focus is on the exploitation of subhomogeneity and on the study of nonlinear cooperative systems. A particular class of interest are switched positive systems and in particular switched epidemiological models.