A new framework for calibrating COVID-19 SEIR models with spatial-/time-varying coefficients using genetic and sliding window algorithms

Abstract: A susceptible-exposed-infected-removed (SEIR) model assumes spatial-/time-varying coefficients to model the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the regional and temporal distribution of COVID-19 disease epidemics. A significant challenge in using such model is their fast and accurate calibration to observed data from geo-referenced hospitalized data, i.e., efficient estimation of the spatial-/time-varying parameters. In this work, a new calibration framework is proposed towards optimizing the spatial-/time-varying parameters of the SEIR model. We also devise a method for combing the overlapping sliding window technique (OSW) with a genetic algorithm (GA) calibration routine to automatically search the segmented parameter space. Parallelized GA is used to reduce the computational burden. Our framework abstracts the implementation complexity of the method away from the user. It provides high-level APIs for setting up a customized calibration system and consuming the optimized values of parameters. We evaluated the application of our method on the calibration of a spatial age-structured microsimulation model using a single objective function that comprises observed COVID-19-related ICU demand. The results reflect the effectiveness of the proposed method towards estimating the parameters in a changing environment.