Prognosis of vector borne dengue disease outbreak in urban areas using multivariate analysis
TL;DR
The feasibility of predicting dengue outbreaks using weekly multivariate time-series data from San Juan, Puerto Rico and Iquitos, Peru is examined, demonstrating that advanced machine learning models can serve as reliable early warning systems for vector-borne diseases.
Abstract
Vector borne disease like dengue continues to pose a significant climate-sensitive public health challenge in tropical regions such as Brazil, Peru, and India. This study examines the feasibility of predicting dengue outbreaks using weekly multivariate time-series data from San Juan (SJ), Puerto Rico and Iquitos (IQ), Peru. Dengue incidence was analyzed alongside meteorological, environmental, and vegetation-based variables to capture key climatic influences. Several machine learning and deep learning approaches were evaluated, including LightGBM. Model performance was assessed using root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). The results show that LightGBM achieved the low est RMSE/MAE, indicating strong short-term predictive accuracy and excellent interpretability. Feature importance analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) identified precipitation, dew point temperature, and humidity as the most influential predictors of dengue incidence. The study demonstrates that advanced machine learning models can serve as reliable early warning systems for vector-borne diseases. While this research focuses on dengue, the methodology is adaptable to other vector-bone datasets and diseases, offering a flexible tool for public health authorities to predict and mitigate outbreaks in diverse urban contexts.