scholarly journals Spatio-temporal modelling of the first Chikungunya epidemic in an intra-urban setting: The role of socioeconomic status, environment and temperature

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. e0009537
Author(s):  
Laís Picinini Freitas ◽  
Alexandra M. Schmidt ◽  
William Cossich ◽  
Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz ◽  
Marilia Sá Carvalho

Three key elements are the drivers of Aedes-borne disease: mosquito infestation, virus circulating, and susceptible human population. However, information on these aspects is not easily available in low- and middle-income countries. We analysed data on factors that influence one or more of those elements to study the first chikungunya epidemic in Rio de Janeiro city in 2016. Using spatio-temporal models, under the Bayesian framework, we estimated the association of those factors with chikungunya reported cases by neighbourhood and week. To estimate the minimum temperature effect in a non-linear fashion, we used a transfer function considering an instantaneous effect and propagation of a proportion of such effect to future times. The sociodevelopment index and the proportion of green areas (areas with agriculture, swamps and shoals, tree and shrub cover, and woody-grass cover) were included in the model with time-varying coefficients, allowing us to explore how their associations with the number of cases change throughout the epidemic. There were 13627 chikungunya cases in the study period. The sociodevelopment index presented the strongest association, inversely related to the risk of cases. Such association was more pronounced in the first weeks, indicating that socioeconomically vulnerable neighbourhoods were affected first and hardest by the epidemic. The proportion of green areas effect was null for most weeks. The temperature was directly associated with the risk of chikungunya for most neighbourhoods, with different decaying patterns. The temperature effect persisted longer where the epidemic was concentrated. In such locations, interventions should be designed to be continuous and to work in the long term. We observed that the role of the covariates changes over time. Therefore, time-varying coefficients should be widely incorporated when modelling Aedes-borne diseases. Our model contributed to the understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of an urban Aedes-borne disease introduction in a tropical metropolitan city.

Eng ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-125
Author(s):  
Edward W. Kamen

A transform approach based on a variable initial time (VIT) formulation is developed for discrete-time signals and linear time-varying discrete-time systems or digital filters. The VIT transform is a formal power series in z−1, which converts functions given by linear time-varying difference equations into left polynomial fractions with variable coefficients, and with initial conditions incorporated into the framework. It is shown that the transform satisfies a number of properties that are analogous to those of the ordinary z-transform, and that it is possible to do scaling of z−i by time functions, which results in left-fraction forms for the transform of a large class of functions including sinusoids with general time-varying amplitudes and frequencies. Using the extended right Euclidean algorithm in a skew polynomial ring with time-varying coefficients, it is shown that a sum of left polynomial fractions can be written as a single fraction, which results in linear time-varying recursions for the inverse transform of the combined fraction. The extraction of a first-order term from a given polynomial fraction is carried out in terms of the evaluation of zi at time functions. In the application to linear time-varying systems, it is proved that the VIT transform of the system output is equal to the product of the VIT transform of the input and the VIT transform of the unit-pulse response function. For systems given by a time-varying moving average or an autoregressive model, the transform framework is used to determine the steady-state output response resulting from various signal inputs such as the step and cosine functions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Chen

Summary This paper studies the estimation of latent group structures in heterogeneous time-varying coefficient panel data models. While allowing the coefficient functions to vary over cross-sections provides a good way to model cross-sectional heterogeneity, it reduces the degree of freedom and leads to poor estimation accuracy when the time-series length is short. On the other hand, in a lot of empirical studies, it is not uncommon to find that heterogeneous coefficients exhibit group structures where coefficients belonging to the same group are similar or identical. This paper aims to provide an easy and straightforward approach for estimating the underlying latent groups. This approach is based on the hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) of kernel estimates of the heterogeneous time-varying coefficients when the number of groups is known. We establish the consistency of this clustering method and also propose a generalised information criterion for estimating the number of groups when it is unknown. Simulation studies are carried out to examine the finite-sample properties of the proposed clustering method as well as the post-clustering estimation of the group-specific time-varying coefficients. The simulation results show that our methods give comparable performance to the penalised-sieve-estimation-based classifier-LASSO approach by Su et al. (2018), but are computationally easier. An application to a panel study of economic growth is also provided.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Ren ◽  
Chung-Chou H. Chang ◽  
Gabriel L. Zenarosa ◽  
Heather E. Tomko ◽  
Drew Michael S. Donnell ◽  
...  

Transplantation is often the only viable treatment for pediatric patients with end-stage liver disease. Making well-informed decisions on when to proceed with transplantation requires accurate predictors of transplant survival. The standard Cox proportional hazards (PH) model assumes that covariate effects are time-invariant on right-censored failure time; however, this assumption may not always hold. Gray’s piecewise constant time-varying coefficients (PC-TVC) model offers greater flexibility to capture the temporal changes of covariate effects without losing the mathematical simplicity of Cox PH model. In the present work, we examined the Cox PH and Gray PC-TVC models on the posttransplant survival analysis of 288 pediatric liver transplant patients diagnosed with cancer. We obtained potential predictors through univariable(P<0.15)and multivariable models with forward selection(P<0.05)for the Cox PH and Gray PC-TVC models, which coincide. While the Cox PH model provided reasonable average results in estimating covariate effects on posttransplant survival, the Gray model using piecewise constant penalized splines showed more details of how those effects change over time.


Author(s):  
Sergey Slobodyan ◽  
◽  
Raf Wouters ◽  
◽  

In this paper, we evaluate a model that describes real-time inflation data together with the inflation expectations measured by the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). We work with a second-order autoregressive model in which the agents learn over time the intercept and persistence coefficients based on real-time data. To model the process of revisions in real time data, we allow for news and noise disturbances. In contrast to the usual time-varying parameter vector autoregression, we use non-linear Kalman filter techniques to estimate the time-varying coefficients of the underlying inflation process. We identify systematic changes in the persistence of the inflation process and in the long-run expected inflation rate that are implied by the model. The inflation forecasts implied by the model are then compared with the SPF forecasts. As we cannot reject the hypothesis that the SPF forecasts are produced based on our model, we re-estimate the model using Survey nowcasts and forecasts as additional observables. This augmented model does not change the nature and magnitude of the time variation in the coefficients of the autoregressive model, but it does help to reduce the uncertainty in the estimates. Overall, the estimated time-variation confirms our results on the perceived inflation process present in estimated DSGE models with learning (Slobodyan and Wouters, 2012a, 2012b).


2011 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
pp. 1083-1101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masakazu Onitsuka ◽  
Jitsuro Sugie

The present paper deals with the following system:where p and p* are positive numbers satisfying 1/p + 1/p* = 1, and ϕq(z) = |z|q−2z for q = p or q = p*. This system is referred to as a half-linear system. We herein establish conditions on time-varying coefficients e(t), f(t), g(t) and h(t) for the zero solution to be uniformly globally asymptotically stable. If (e(t), f(t)) ≡ (h(t), g(t)), then the half-linear system is integrable. We consider two cases: the integrable case (e(t), f(t)) ≡ (h(t), g(t)) and the non-integrable case (e(t), f(t)) ≢ (h(t), g(t)). Finally, some simple examples are presented to illustrate our results.


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