Bagheri H, Tapak L, Karami M, Hosseinkhani Z, Najari H, Karimi S, Cheraghi Z. Forecasting the monthly incidence rate of brucellosis in west of Iran using time series and data mining from 2010 to 2019.
PLoS One 2020;
15:e0232910. [PMID:
32396582 PMCID:
PMC7217463 DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0232910]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2020] [Accepted: 04/23/2020] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Background
The identification of statistical models for the accurate forecast and timely determination of the outbreak of infectious diseases is very important for the healthcare system. Thus, this study was conducted to assess and compare the performance of four machine-learning methods in modeling and forecasting brucellosis time series data based on climatic parameters.
Methods
In this cohort study, human brucellosis cases and climatic parameters were analyzed on a monthly basis for the Qazvin province–located in northwestern Iran- over a period of 9 years (2010–2018). The data were classified into two subsets of education (80%) and testing (20%). Artificial neural network methods (radial basis function and multilayer perceptron), support vector machine and random forest were fitted to each set. Performance analysis of the models were done using the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Root Error (MARE), and R2 criteria.
Results
The incidence rate of the brucellosis in Qazvin province was 27.43 per 100,000 during 2010–2019. Based on our results, the values of the RMSE (0.22), MAE (0.175), MARE (0.007) criteria were smaller for the multilayer perceptron neural network than their values in the other three models. Moreover, the R2 (0.99) value was bigger in this model. Therefore, the multilayer perceptron neural network exhibited better performance in forecasting the studied data. The average wind speed and mean temperature were the most effective climatic parameters in the incidence of this disease.
Conclusions
The multilayer perceptron neural network can be used as an effective method in detecting the behavioral trend of brucellosis over time. Nevertheless, further studies focusing on the application and comparison of these methods are needed to detect the most appropriate forecast method for this disease.
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