Journal Article

Forecasting influenza in Europe using a metapopulation model incorporating cross-border commuting and air travel

Shaman, Jeffrey, Kramer, Sarah C., Pei, Sen

2020

Overview

Past work has shown that models incorporating human travel can improve the quality of influenza forecasts. Here, we develop and validate a metapopulation model of twelve European countries, in which international translocation of virus is driven by observed commuting and air travel flows, and use this model to generate influenza forecasts in conjunction with incidence data from the World Health Organization. We find that, although the metapopulation model fits the data well, it offers no improvement over isolated models in forecast quality. We discuss several potential reasons for these results. In particular, we note the need for data that are more comparable from country to country, and offer suggestions as to how surveillance systems might be improved to achieve this goal.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Accuracy / Air transportation / Air Travel / Aircraft / Commuting / Computational Biology / Computer and Information Sciences / Disease Outbreaks - statistics & numerical data / Distribution / Earth Sciences / Engineering and Technology / Environmental health / Epidemics / Europe / Forecasting / Forecasts and trends / Health aspects / Health sciences / Humans / Humidity / Influenza / Influenza research / Influenza viruses / Influenza, Human - epidemiology / Influenza, Human - transmission / Mathematical models / Medicine and Health Sciences / Metapopulations / Models, Statistical / Pandemics / People and Places / Physical Sciences / Population geography / Public health / Research and Analysis Methods / Seasons / Sentinel health events / Social Sciences / Surveillance systems / Translocation / Travel / Viruses