new publication: prediction of COVID-19 cases for decision making

new publication: prediction of COVID-19 cases for decision making

April 24, 2022

New publication co-authored by our PD Hannes Taubenboeck on “Data-driven prediction of COVID-19 cases in Germany for decision making” in BMC Medical Research Methodology. From the abstract: ”

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a high interest in mathematical models describing and predicting the diverse aspects and implications of the virus outbreak. Model results represent an important part of the information base for the decision process on different administrative levels. The Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) initiated a project whose main goal is to predict COVID-19-specific occupation of beds in intensive care units: Steuerungs-Prognose von Intensivmedizinischen COVID-19 Kapazitäten (SPoCK). The incidence of COVID-19 cases is a crucial predictor for this occupation.

Methods

We developed a model based on ordinary differential equations for the COVID-19 spread with a time-dependent infection rate described by a spline. Furthermore, the model explicitly accounts for weekday-specific reporting and adjusts for reporting delay. The model is calibrated in a purely data-driven manner by a maximum likelihood approach. Uncertainties are evaluated using the profile likelihood method. The uncertainty about the appropriate modeling assumptions can be accounted for by including and merging results of different modelling approaches. The analysis uses data from Germany describing the COVID-19 spread from early 2020 until March 31st, 2021.

Results

The model is calibrated based on incident cases on a daily basis and provides daily predictions of incident COVID-19 cases for the upcoming three weeks including uncertainty estimates for Germany and its subregions. Derived quantities such as cumulative counts and 7-day incidences with corresponding uncertainties can be computed. The estimation of the time-dependent infection rate leads to an estimated reproduction factor that is oscillating around one. Data-driven estimation of the dark figure purely from incident cases is not feasible.

Conclusions

We successfully implemented a procedure to forecast near future COVID-19 incidences for diverse subregions in Germany which are made available to various decision makers via an interactive web application. Results of the incidence modeling are also used as a predictor for forecasting the need of intensive care units.

read the full article here:

https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12874-022-01579-9

you may also like:

EORC and EAGLE summer BBQ

EORC and EAGLE summer BBQ

We’re happy to announce that our summer BBQ is happening again on Thursday, July 24th at 4pm! Alongside good food and a relaxed atmosphere, we’re also hosting a series of short talks highlighting exciting topics in Earth Observation and environmental science: “The...

🗺 Exploring Map Visualizations

🗺 Exploring Map Visualizations

Within our EAGLE courses our students have to learn a wide variety of skills - beside the fundamental earth observation theory and practice also skills like map creation is part of the curriculum. One of our students Ronja Seitz has created three visualizations guides...

Successful Completion of UNIversInternational Certificate

Successful Completion of UNIversInternational Certificate

In line with its internationalization strategy, the University of Würzburg supports administrative staff in their task of advising and supporting international students, guests, and academics. To this end, it has launched the "UNIversInternational" certificate...

The “Geolingual Studies” team visited the DLR EOC

The “Geolingual Studies” team visited the DLR EOC

The "Geolingual Studies" team of the University Würzburg visited the DLR-EOC on 3 and 4 July 2025. Geolingual Studies is an innovative area of research and teaching which takes a decisively applied linguistic approach and combines methodologies from linguistics,...

Course on Object-based image analysis

Course on Object-based image analysis

Dr. Michael Wurm from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) gave a class about Object-based image analysis (OBIA) using the eCognition Software for the EAGLE students. The course gives an insight into the theoretical basis of OBIA and using different datasets and tasks...