Related papers: Approximating optimal SMC proposal distributions i…
Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) algorithms represent a suite of robust computational methodologies utilized for state estimation and parameter inference within dynamical systems, particularly in real-time or online environments where data…
Agent-based models of disease transmission involve stochastic rules that specify how a number of individuals would infect one another, recover or be removed from the population. Common yet stringent assumptions stipulate interchangeability…
Sequential Monte Carlo methods are a powerful framework for approximating the posterior distribution of a state variable in a sequential manner. They provide an attractive way of analyzing dynamic systems in real-time, taking into account…
Renewal models are widely used in statistical epidemiology as semi-mechanistic models of disease transmission. While primarily used for estimating the instantaneous reproduction number, they can also be used for generating projections,…
Model comparison for the purposes of selection, averaging and validation is a problem found throughout statistics. Within the Bayesian paradigm, these problems all require the calculation of the posterior probabilities of models within a…
We propose sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods for sampling the posterior distribution of state-space models under highly informative observation regimes, a situation in which standard SMC methods can perform poorly. A special case is…
Epidemics are inherently stochastic, and stochastic models provide an appropriate way to describe and analyse such phenomena. Given temporal incidence data consisting of, for example, the number of new infections or removals in a given time…
Estimating latent epidemic states and model parameters from partially observed, noisy data remains a major challenge in infectious disease modeling. State-space formulations provide a coherent probabilistic framework for such inference, yet…
An individual-based model of the infectious disease spread among the urban population is considered. A system of stochastic equations, which describes changes in quantities of four population groups, susceptible, exposed, infected…
Deterministic compartmental models are predominantly used in the modeling of infectious diseases, though stochastic models are considered more realistic, yet are complicated to estimate due to missing data. In this paper we present a novel…
A prompt public health response to a new epidemic relies on the ability to monitor and predict its evolution in real time as data accumulate. The 2009 A/H1N1 outbreak in the UK revealed pandemic data as noisy, contaminated, potentially…
Sequential Monte Carlo methods, also known as particle methods, are a popular set of techniques for approximating high-dimensional probability distributions and their normalizing constants. These methods have found numerous applications in…
Phenomenological and deterministic models are often used for the estimation of transmission parameters in an epidemic and for the prediction of its growth trajectory. Such analyses are usually based on single peak outbreak dynamics. In…
This lecture note provides a self-contained introduction to Bayesian inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for parameter estimation in epidemic models. Using the classical Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) compartmental…
Throughout the course of an epidemic, the rate at which disease spreads varies with behavioral changes, the emergence of new disease variants, and the introduction of mitigation policies. Estimating such changes in transmission rates can…
Assessing the practical identifiability of epidemic models is essential for determining whether parameters can be meaningfully estimated from observed data. Monte Carlo (MC) methods provide an accessible and intuitive framework; however,…
The dynamics of contact networks and epidemics of infectious diseases often occur on comparable time scales. Ignoring one of these time scales may provide an incomplete understanding of the population dynamics of the infection process. We…
Global pandemics, such as the recent COVID-19 crisis, highlight the need for stochastic epidemic models that can capture the randomness inherent in the spread of disease. Such models must be accompanied by methods for estimating parameters…
During the first months, the Covid-19 pandemic has required most countries to implement complex sequences of non-pharmaceutical interventions, with the aim of controlling the transmission of the virus in the population. To be able to take…
A core problem in statistics and probabilistic machine learning is to compute probability distributions and expectations. This is the fundamental problem of Bayesian statistics and machine learning, which frames all inference as…