Influenza Forecast: Comparison of Case-Based Reasoning and Statistical Methods

摘要

Influenza is the last of the classic plagues of the past, which still has to be brought under control. It causes a lot of costs: prolonged stays in hospitals and especially many days of unfitness for work. Therefore many of the most developed countries have started to create influenza surveillance systems. Mostly statistical methods are applied to predict influenza epidemics. However, the results are rather moderate, because influenza waves occur in irregular cycles. We have developed a method that combines Case-Based Reasoning with temporal abstraction. Here we compare experimental results of our method and statistical methods.