seasonal_onset: Automated and Early Detection of Seasonal Epidemic Onset

In aedseo: Automated and Early Detection of Seasonal Epidemic Onset and Burden Levels

Automated and Early Detection of Seasonal Epidemic Onset

Description

This function performs automated and early detection of seasonal epidemic onsets on a tsd object. It estimates growth rates and calculates the average sum of cases in consecutive time intervals (k). If the time series data includes population it will be used as offset to adjust the growth rate in the glm, additionally the output will include incidence, population and average sum of incidence.

Usage

seasonal_onset(
  tsd,
  k = 5,
  level = 0.95,
  disease_threshold = NA_real_,
  family = c("quasipoisson", "poisson"),
  na_fraction_allowed = 0.4,
  season_start = NULL,
  season_end = season_start - 1,
  only_current_season = NULL
)

Arguments

tsd	A tsd object containing time series data
k	An integer specifying the window size for modeling growth rates and average sum of cases.
level	The confidence level for onset parameter estimates, a numeric value between 0 and 1.
disease_threshold	A number specifying the threshold for considering a disease outbreak. Should be given as incidence if population and incidence_denominator are in the tsd object else as cases. It defines the per time-step disease threshold that has to be surpassed to possibly trigger a seasonal onset alarm. If the average observation count in a window of size k exceeds disease_threshold, a seasonal onset alarm can be triggered.
family	A character string specifying the family for modeling. Choose between 'poisson', or 'quasipoisson'. Must be one of: character, family-generator, or family object.
na_fraction_allowed	Numeric value between 0 and 1 specifying the fraction of observations in the window of size k that are allowed to be NA or zero, i.e. without cases, in onset calculations.
season_start, season_end	Integers giving the start and end weeks of the seasons to stratify the observations by. If set to NULL, it means no stratification by season.
only_current_season	Should the output only include results for the current season?

Value

A tsd_onset object containing:

• 'reference_time': The time point for which the growth rate is estimated.

• 'cases': The cases at reference time point.

• 'population': The population at reference time point.

• 'incidence': The incidence at reference time point.

• 'season': The stratification of observables in corresponding seasons.

• 'growth_rate': The estimated growth rate.

• 'lower_growth_rate': The lower bound of the growth rate's confidence interval.

• 'upper_growth_rate': The upper bound of the growth rate's confidence interval.

• 'growth_warning': Logical. Is the growth rate significantly higher than zero?

• 'average_observation_window': The average of cases or incidence within the time window.

• 'average_observation_warning': Logical. Does the average observations exceed the disease threshold?

• 'seasonal_onset_alarm': Logical. Is there a seasonal onset alarm?

• 'skipped_window': Logical. Was the window skipped due to missing observations?

• 'converged': Logical. Was the IWLS judged to have converged?

• 'seasonal_onset': Logical. The first detected seasonal onset in the season.

• Attributes: time_interval and incidence_denominator.

Examples

# Create a tibble object from sample data
tsd_data <- to_time_series(
  cases = c(100, 120, 150, 180, 220, 270),
  time = seq(from = as.Date("2023-01-01"), by = "1 week", length.out = 6)
)

# Estimate seasonal onset with a 3-day window
seasonal_onset(
  tsd = tsd_data,
  k = 3,
  level = 0.975,
  disease_threshold = 5,
  na_fraction_allowed = 0.4,
  season_start = 21,
  season_end = 20,
  only_current_season = FALSE
)

aedseo documentation built on Nov. 18, 2025, 1:07 a.m.