Predicting the spread of epidemiological diseases by using a multi-objective algorithm

Abstract

The epidemiological models are able to predict the spread of diseases, but a previous work on calibrating some involved parameters must be done. In this work, we propose a methodology to adjust those parameters based on solving a multi-objective optimization problem whose objective functions measure the accuracy of the model. More precisely, we have considered the Between-Countries Disease Spread model because it involves a set of countries taking into account the migratory movements among them. As a result, using some real data about the number of detected cases and the number of deaths for the Ebola virus disease, we have shown that the methodology is able to find a set of values for the parameters so that the model fits the outbreak spread for a set of countries.