sbfnk / covid19-forecast-hub-europe

European Covid-19 Forecast Hub. Under development.

European COVID-19 Forecast Hub

We are aggregating forecasts of new cases and deaths due to Covid-19 over the next four weeks in countries across Europe and the UK.

Latest forecasts

• View the current forecasts
• We publish a weekly evaluation of current forecasts
• Raw forecast files are in the data-processed folder

README contents

• Quick start
• About Covid-19 forecast hubs
  • European forecast hub team
  • Data license and reuse

Quick start

This is a brief outline for anyone considering contributing a forecast. For a detailed guide on how to structure and submit a forecast, please read the technical wiki.

Set up

Before contributing for the first time:

• Let us know you are planning to submit
• Create a team directory
• Add your metadata and a license

Forecasting

We require some forecast parameters so that we can compare and ensemble forecasts. All forecasts should use the following structure:

Parameter	Description
Target	Cases and/or deaths
Count	Incident
Geography	EU/EFTA/UK nations (any/all)
Frequency	Weekly
Horizon	1 to 4 weeks

There is no obligation to submit forecasts for all suggested targets or horizons, and it is up to you to decide which you are comfortable forecasting with your model.

We have written more about forecast targets, horizons, and locations in the guide.

Dates

We use Epidemiological Weeks (EW) defined by the US CDC. Each week starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. We provide more details here, and templates to convert dates to EW weeks (and vice versa).

Truth data

We base evaluations on country level data from Johns Hopkins University.

Submitting

Forecasts should be submitted on Monday by opening a pull request in this repository. So that we can evaluate and ensemble forecasts, we ask for a specific file structure and naming format: our wiki contains a detailed guide. If you have technical difficulties with submission, try troubleshooting or get in touch by raising an issue.

Evaluating and ensembling

After teams have submitted their forecasts, we create an ensemble forecast. Note that the ensemble only includes the forecasts that completely match the standard format (for example those with all the specified quantiles). See the inclusion criteria for more details.

We also publish some weekly evaluation across forecasting models.

About Covid-19 forecasting hubs

This effort parallels forecasting hubs in the US and Germany. We follow a similar structure and data format, and re-use software provided by the ReichLab.

• The US COVID-19 Forecast Hub is run by the UMass-Amherst Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence based at the Reich Lab.

• The German and Polish COVID-19 Forecast Hub is run by members of the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) and the Computational Statistics Group at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies.

European forecast hub team

This repository is based on and supported by members of the US, and German and Polish Forecast Hubs. A small team is adapting this work for the European forecasting hub. We are based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and supported by grant funding from the ECDC.

Direct contributors to this repository include (in alphabetical order):

• Nikos Bosse (@nikosbosse)
• Sebastian Funk (@sbfnk)
• Katharine Sherratt (@kathsherratt)

Data license and reuse

• The forecasts assembled in this repository have been created by independent teams. Most provide a license in their respective subfolder of data-processed.
• Parts of the processing, analysis and validation code have been taken or adapted from the US Covid-19 forecast hub and the Germany/Poland Covid-19 forecast hub both under an MIT license.
• All code contained in this repository is under the MIT license. Please get in touch with us to re-use materials from this repository.