The use of mixture density networks in the emulation of complex epidemiological individual-based models
Author(s)
Davis, Christopher N
Hollingsworth, T Deirdre
Caudron, Quentin
Irvine, Michael A
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Complex, highly-computational, individual-based models are abundant in epidemiology. For epidemics such as macro-parasitic diseases, detailed modelling of human behaviour and pathogen life-cycle are required in order to produce accurate results. This can often lead to models that are computationally-expensive to analyse and perform model fitting, and often require many simulation runs in order to build up sufficient statistics. Emulation can provide a more computationally-efficient output of the individual-based model, by approximating it using a statistical model. Previous work has used Gaussian processes (GPs) in order to achieve this, but these can not deal with multi-modal, heavy-tailed, or discrete distributions. Here, we introduce the concept of a mixture density network (MDN) in its application in the emulation of epidemiological models. MDNs incorporate both a mixture model and a neural network to provide a flexible tool for emulating a variety of models and outputs. We develop an MDN emulation methodology and demonstrate its use on a number of simple models incorporating both normal, gamma and beta distribution outputs. We then explore its use on the stochastic SIR model to predict the final size distribution and infection dynamics. MDNs have the potential to faithfully reproduce multiple outputs of an individual-based model and allow for rapid analysis from a range of users. As such, an open-access library of the method has been released alongside this manuscript.
Date Issued
2020-03-01
Date Acceptance
2020-02-20
Citation
PLoS Computational Biology, 2020, 16 (3), pp.1-16
ISSN
1553-734X
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Start Page
1
End Page
16
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Computational Biology
Volume
16
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2020 Davis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000523480200002&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biochemical Research Methods
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
STOCHASTIC SIMULATION
DYNAMICS
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN e1006869
Date Publish Online
2020-03-16