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STL and Local Regression for Modeling Disease Surveillance Counts

Description

Numerous methods have been applied to the problem of modeling temporal properties of disease surveillance data; the ESSENCE system contains a widely used approach (1). STL (2) is a flexible, wellproven method for temporal modeling that decomposes the series into frequency components. A periodic component like DW can be exactly periodic or evolve through time. STL is based on loess (3), which can model a numeric response as a function of any explanatory variables. After the STL modeling of the counts, we will add patient address and produce a timespace modeling using both STL and more general loess methods.

 

Objective

Use the STL local-regression (loess) decomposition procedure and transformation to model the univariate time-series characteristics of chief-complaint daily counts as a first step in a time and spatial modeling. Develop visualization tools for model display and checking.

Submitted by elamb on