The effect of spatial scale on predicting time series: a study on epidemiological system identifi\-cation (Q1036268)

Summary: A susceptible-infective-recovered (SIR) epidemiological model based on probabilistic cellular automata (PCA) is employed for simulating the temporal evolution of registered cases of chickenpox in Arizona, USA, between 1994 and 2004. At each time step, every individual is in one of the states S, I, or R. The parameters of this model are the probabilities of each individual (each cell forming the PCA lattice) passing from one state to another. The values of these probabilities are identified by using a genetic algorithm. If nonrealistic values are allowed for the parameters, the predictions present better agreement with the historical series than if they are forced to present realistic values. A discussion about how the size of the PCA lattice affects the quality of the model predictions is presented.