Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33577550›Full record

ArticlePLoS computational biology2021

Evaluating epidemic forecasts in an interval format.

Johannes Bracher, Evan L Ray, Tilmann Gneiting, Nicholas G Reich

Erratum issuedAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLoS computational biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 132 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
132citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

132 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
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  4. Article
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  9. Article
  10. Local Influenza Forecasts Outperform State-Level Forecasts in the United States.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026
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  12. Spatio-temporal epidemic forecasting with graph-based transformer.International journal of health geographics · 2026
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  16. Toward AI foundation models for epidemics: Promise, challenges, and paths forward.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
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  19. Leveraging probabilistic forecasts for dengue preparedness and control: The 2024 Dengue Forecasting Sprint in Brazil.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  20. Article

72 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Johannes BracherChair of Statistics and Econometrics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-3777-1410
Evan L RaySchool of Public Health and Health Sciences, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Tilmann GneitingComputational Statistics Group, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Heidelberg, Germany.ORCID 0000-0001-9397-3271
Nicholas G ReichSchool of Public Health and Health Sciences, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0003-3503-9899

Funding

Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence at University of Massachusetts AmherstU01IP001122 · IP · UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST · PI REICH, NICHOLAS G · 2019 to 2023
$5.4M
ACL HHS U01IP001122NCIRD CDC HHS U01 IP001122
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

For practical reasons, many forecasts of case, hospitalization, and death counts in the context of the current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are issued in the form of central predictive intervals at various levels. This is also the case for the forecasts collected in the COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.org/). Forecast evaluation metrics like the logarithmic score, which has been applied in several infectious disease forecasting challenges, are then not available as they require full predictive distributions. This article provides an overview of how established methods for the evaluation of quantile and interval forecasts can be applied to epidemic forecasts in this format. Specifically, we discuss the computation and interpretation of the weighted interval score, which is a proper score that approximates the continuous ranked probability score. It can be interpreted as a generalization of the absolute error to probabilistic forecasts and allows for a decomposition into a measure of sharpness and penalties for over- and underprediction.

Indexed as

PandemicsCommunicable DiseasesCOVID-19ForecastingHumansProbabilitySARS-CoV-2

Identifiers

PMID33577550
PMCPMC7880475

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.