Time series analysis-based seasonal autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average to estimate hepatitis B and C epidemics in China

BACKGROUND Hepatitis B(HB)and hepatitis C(HC)place the largest burden in China,and a goal of eliminating them as a major public health threat by 2030 has been set.Making more informed and accurate forecasts of their spread is essential for developing effective strategies,heightening the requirement for early warning to deal with such a major public health threat.AIM To monitor HB and HC epidemics by the design of a paradigmatic seasonal autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average(SARFIMA)for projections into 2030,and to compare the effectiveness with the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average(SARIMA).METHODS Monthly HB and HC incidence cases in China were obtained from January 2004 to June 2023.Descriptive analysis and the Hodrick-Prescott method were employed to identify trends and seasonality.Two periods(from January 2004 to June 2022 and from January 2004 to December 2015,respectively)were used as the training sets to develop both models,while the remaining periods served as the test sets to evaluate the forecasting accuracy.RESULTS There were incidents of 23400874 HB cases and 3590867 HC cases from January 2004 to June 2023.Overall,HB remained steady[average annual percentage change(AAPC)=0.44,95%confidence interval(95%CI):-0.94-1.84]while HC was increasing(AAPC=8.91,95%CI:6.98-10.88),and both had a peak in March and a trough in February.In the 12-step-ahead HB forecast,the mean absolute deviation(15211.94),root mean square error(18762.94),mean absolute percentage error(0.17),mean error rate(0.15),and root mean square percentage error(0.25)under the best SARFIMA(3,0,0)(0,0.449,2)12 were smaller than those under the best SARIMA(3,0,0)(0,1,2)12(16867.71,20775.12,0.19,0.17,and 0.27,respectively).Similar results were also observed for the 90-step-ahead HB,12-step-ahead HC,and 90-step-ahead HC forecasts.The predicted HB incidents totaled 9865400(95%CI:7508093-12222709)cases and HC totaled 1659485(95%CI:856681-2462290)cases during 2023-2030.CONCLUSION Under current interventions,China faces enormous challenges to eliminate HB and HC epidemics by 2030,and effective strategies must be reinforced.The integration of SARFIMA into public health for the management of HB and HC epidemics can potentially result in more informed and efficient interventions,surpassing the capabilities of SARIMA.

Modeling and forecasting time series of precious metals:a new approach to multifractal data

We introduce a novel approach to multifractal data in order to achieve transcended modeling and forecasting performances by extracting time series out of local Hurst exponent calculations at a specified scale.First,the long range and co-movement dependencies of the time series are scrutinized on time-frequency space using multiple wavelet coherence analysis.Then,the multifractal behaviors of the series are verified by multifractal de-trended fluctuation analysis and its local Hurst exponents are calculated.Additionally,root mean squares of residuals at the specified scale are procured from an intermediate step during local Hurst exponent calculations.These internally calculated series have been used to estimate the process with vector autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average(VARFIMA)model and forecasted accordingly.In our study,the daily prices of gold,silver and platinum are used for assessment.The results have shown that all metals do behave in phase movement on long term periods and possess multifractal features.Furthermore,the intermediate time series obtained during local Hurst exponent calculations still appertain the co-movement as well as multifractal characteristics of the raw data and may be successfully re-scaled,modeled and forecasted by using VARFIMA model.Conclusively,VARFIMA model have notably surpassed its univariate counterpart(ARFIMA)in all efficacious trials while re-emphasizing the importance of comovement procurement in modeling.Our study’s novelty lies in using a multifractal de-trended fluctuation analysis,along with multiple wavelet coherence analysis,for forecasting purposes to an extent not seen before.The results will be of particular significance to finance researchers and practitioners.

Traffic Prediction in 3G Mobile Networks Based on Multifractal Exploration

Traffic prediction plays an integral role in telecommunication network planning and network optimization. In this paper, we investigate the traffic forecasting for data services in 3G mobile networks. Although the Box-Jenkins model has been proven to be appropriate for voice traffic （since the arrival of calls follows a Poisson distribution）, it has been demonstrated that the Internet traffic exhibits statistical self-similarity and has to be modeled using the Fractional AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average （FARIMA） process. However, a few studies have concluded that the FARIMA process may fail in modeling the Internet traffic. To this end, we conducted experiments on the modeling of benchmark Internet traffic and found that the FARIMA process fails because of the significant multifractal characteristic inherent in the traffic series. Thereafter, we investigate the traffic series of data services in a 3G mobile network from a province in China. Rich multifractal spectra are found in this series. Based on this observation, an integrated method combining the AutoRegressive Moving Average （ARMA） and FARIMA processes is applied. The obtained experimental results verify the effectiveness of the integrated prediction method.