Epidemiology

Internal medicine

Public health

Sociology

Mathematics

Incidence (geometry)

Statistics

Outbreak

Covariate

Demography

Nursing

Virology

Geography

Geometry

Dengue virus

Receiver operating characteristic

Dengue hemorrhagic fever

Dengue fever

Medicine

Environmental health

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Dengue hemorrhagic fever poses a major problem for public health officials in Thailand. The number and location of cases vary dramatically from year to year, which makes planning prevention and treatment activities before the dengue season difficult. We develop statistical models with biologically motivated covariates to make forecasts for each Thai province every year. The forecasts from our models have less error than those of a baseline model on out-of-sample data. Furthermore, the forecasts from a model based on incidence occurring before the start of the rainy season successfully order provinces by outbreak risk. These early, accurate forecasts of dengue hemorrhagic fever incidence could help public health officials determine where to allocate their resources in the future.

Prospective forecasts of annual dengue hemorrhagic fever incidence in Thailand, 2010–2014