Modeling and Analysis of Monkeypox Outbreak Using a New Time Series Ensemble Technique

The coronavirus pandemic has raised concerns about the emergence of other viral infections, such as monkeypox, which has become a significant hazard to public health. Thus, this work proposes a novel time series ensemble technique for analyzing and forecasting the spread of monkeypox in the four highly infected countries with the monkeypox virus. This approach involved processing the first cumulative confirmed case time series to address variance stabilization, normalization, stationarity, and a nonlinear secular trend component. After that, five single time series models and three proposed ensemble models are used to estimate the filtered confirmed case time series. The accuracy of the models is evaluated using typical accuracy mean errors, graphical evaluation, and an equal forecasting accuracy statistical test. Based on the results, it is found that the proposed time series ensemble forecasting approach is an efficient and accurate way to forecast the cumulative confirmed cases for the top four countries in the world and the entire world. Using the best ensemble model, a forecast is made for the next 28 days (four weeks), which will help understand the spread of the disease and the associated risks. This information can prevent further spread and enable timely and effective treatment. Furthermore, the developed novel time series ensemble approach can be used to forecast other diseases in the future.