This repository contains forecasts submitted to CDC as part of the FluSight influenza-related hospitalization forecasting challenge. It is being provided as a resource to help develop ensemble models and additional methods for intepreting/visualizing forecasts. Forecast data are publically contributed by the teams involved in the challenge. They are not official CDC forecasts and are not endorsed by CDC. Anyone interested in using these data for additional research or publications is requested to contact [email protected] for information regarding attribution of the source forecasts.
Since 2013, the Influenza Division at CDC has worked with external researchers to improve the science and usability of influenza forecasts by coordinating seasonal influenza prediction challenges. Teams create models to predict seasonal and short-term targets related to seasonal influenza and submit weekly forecasts to CDC. More information and visualizations of forecasts can be found at the FluSight website.
Forecast submissions are organized by season, and within each season by team name or number. Submissions are labeled in the format “EWXX-TeamXX-YYYY-MM-DD.csv”, where
- EWXX is the latest MMWR week of data used in the forecast
- TeamXX is the team name/number
- YYYY-MM-DD is the date of forecast submission
Visualizations for current week's forecasts can now be found on the FluSight website.
Submissions are structured in an identical matter. Each submission consists of the following variables:
- Location: age group of forecast - either overall hospitalization rate or age-group specific
- Target: forecast target
- Type: forecast type - either "Point" for point forecast or "Bin" for probabilistic bin
- Unit: unit of forecast - either "week" or "percent" (note: bins labeled "percent" reflect the rate per 100,000)
- Bin_start_incl: inclusive starting value for probabilistic forecast bin
- Bin_end_notincl: exclusive ending value for probabilistic forecast bin
- Value: forecasted point value or probability assigned
Each submission consists of forecasts for the following targets:
- Peak week: The MMWR surveillance week that the weekly hospitalization rate is the highest for a given influenza season.
- Peak rate: The highest numeric value that the weekly hospitalization rate reaches during a given influenza season.
- 1 wk ahead: Weekly hospitalization rate for the MMWR week following the last week of data used to generate the forecast
- 2 wk ahead: Weekly hospitalization rate for the MMWR week two weeks after the last week of data used to generate the forecast
- 3 wk ahead: Weekly hospitalization rate for the MMWR week three weeks after the last week of data used to generate the forecast
- 4 wk ahead: Weekly hospitalization rate for the MMWR week four weeks after the last week of data used to generate the forecast
The submission template for the 2017-2018 challenge is available in the 2017-2018_submission_template CSV file.