Comparing the accuracy of several network-based COVID-19 prediction algorithms
Massimo A. Achterberg, Bastian Prasse, Long Ma, Stojan Trajanovski, Maksim Kitsak, Piet Van Mieghem
Abstract
Researchers from various scientific disciplines have attempted to forecast the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The proposed epidemic prediction methods range from basic curve fitting methods and traffic interaction models to machine-learning approaches. If we combine all these approaches, we obtain the Network Inference-based Prediction Algorithm (NIPA). In this paper, we analyse a diverse set of COVID-19 forecast algorithms, including several modifications of NIPA. Among the algorithms that we evaluated, the original NIPA performed best at forecasting the spread of COVID-19 in Hubei, China and in the Netherlands. In particular, we show that network-based forecasting is superior to any other forecasting algorithm.