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Inference model configuration setup

Elizabeth Lee edited this page Feb 4, 2021 · 2 revisions

Need to add multiTimeReduce and hospitalization interventions

Overview

This documentation describes the new YAML configuration file options that may be used when performing inference on model runs. As compared to previous model releases, there are additions to the seeding and interventions sections, the outcomes section replaces the hospitalization section, and the filtering section added to the file.

Importantly, we now name our pipeline modules: seeding, seir, hospitalization and this becomes relevant to some of the new filtering specifications.

Models may be calibrated to any available time series data that is also an outcome of the model (COVID-19 confirmed cases, deaths, hospitalization or ICU admissions, hospital or ICU occupancy, and ventilator use). Our typical usage has calibrated the model to deaths, confirmed cases, or both. We can also perform inference on intervention effectiveness, county-specific baseline R0, and the risk of specific health outcomes.

We describe these options below and present default values in the example configuration sections.

Modifications to seeding

The model can perform inference on the seeding date and initial number of seeding infections in each geoid. An example of this new config section is:

seeding:
  method: FolderDraw
  seeding_file_type: seed
  folder_path: importation/minimal/
  lambda_file: data/minimal/seeding.csv
  perturbation_sd: 3
Config Item Required? Type/Format Description
method required "FolderDraw"
seeding_file_type required for FolderDraw "seed" or "impa" indicates which seeding file type the SEIR model will look for, "seed", which is generated from create_seeding.R, or "impa", which refers to importation
folder_path required path to folder where importation inference files will be saved
lambda_file required path to seeding file
perturbation_sd required standard deviation for the proposal value of the seeding date, in number of days

The method for determining the proposal distribution for the seeding amount is hard-coded in the inference package (R/pkgs/inference/R/functions/perturb_seeding.R). It is pertubed with a normal distribution where the mean of the distribution 10 times the number of confirmed cases on a given date and the standard deviation is 1.

Modifications to interventions

The model can perform inference on the effectiveness of interventions as long as there is at least some calibration health outcome data that overlaps with the intervention period. For example, if calibrating to deaths, there should be data from time points where it would be possible to observe deaths from infections that occurred during the intervention period (e.g., assuming 10-18 day delay between infection and death, on average).

An example configuration file where inference is performed on scenario planning interventions is as follows:

interventions:
  scenarios:
    - Scenario1
  settings:
    local_variance:
      template: ReduceR0
      value:
        distribution: truncnorm
        mean: 0
        sd: .1
        a: -1
        b: 1
      perturbation:
        distribution: truncnorm
        mean: 0
        sd: .1
        a: -1
        b: 1
    stayhome:
      template: ReduceR0
      period_start_date: 2020-04-04
      period_end_date: 2020-04-30
      value:
        distribution: truncnorm
        mean: 0.6
        sd: 0.3
        a: 0
        b: 0.9
      perturbation:
        distribution: truncnorm
        mean: 0
        sd: .1
        a: -1
        b: 1
    Scenario1:
      template: Stacked
      scenarios: 
        - local_variance
        - stayhome

interventions::settings::[setting_name]

This configuration allows us to infer geoid-level baseline R0 estimates by adding a local_variance intervention. The baseline geoid-specific R0 estimate may be calculated as $$R0*(1-local_variance),$$ where R0 is the baseline simulation R0 value, and local_variance is an estimated geoid-specific value.

Interventions may be specified in the same way as before, or with an added perturbation section that indicates that inference should be performed on a given intervention's effectiveness. As previously, interventions with perturbations may be specified for all modeled locations or for explicit affected_geoids. In this setup, both the prior distribution and the range of the support of the final inferred value are specified by the value section. In the configuration above, the inference algorithm will search 0 to 0.9 for all geoids to estimate the effectiveness of the stayhome intervention period. The prior distribution on intervention effectiveness follows a truncated normal distribution with a mean of 0.6 and a standard deviation of 0.3. The perturbation section specifies the perturbation/step size between the previously-accepted values and the next proposal value.

Item Required? Type/Format
template Required "ReduceR0" or "Stacked"
period_start_date optional for ReduceR0 date between global start_date and end_date; default is global start_date
period_end_date optional for ReduceR0 date between global start_date and end_date; default is global end_date
value required for ReduceR0 specifies both the prior distribution and range of support for the final inferred values
perturbation optional for ReduceR0 this option indicates whether inference will be performed on this setting and how the proposal value will be identified from the last accepted value
affected_geoids optional for ReduceR0 list of geoids, which must be in geodata

New outcomes section

This section is now structured more like the interventions section of the config, in that it has scenarios and settings. We envision that separate scenarios will be specified for each IFR assumption.

outcomes:
  method: delayframe
  param_from_file: TRUE
  param_place_file: "usa-geoid-params-output.parquet" ## ../../Outcomes/data/usa-geoid-params-output.parquet
  scenarios:
    - med
  settings:
    med:
      incidH:
        source: incidI
        probability:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: .035
        delay:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 7
        duration:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 7
          name: hosp_curr
      incidD:
        source: incidI
        probability:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: .01
        delay:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 20
      incidICU:
        source: incidH
        probability: 
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 0.167
        delay:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 3
        duration:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 8
      incidVent:
        source: incidICU
        probability: 
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 0.463
        delay:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 1
        duration:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 7
      incidC:
        source: incidI
        probability:
          value:
            distribution: truncnorm
            mean: .1
            sd: .1
            a: 0
            b: 10
          perturbation:
            distribution: truncnorm
            mean: 0
            sd: .1
            a: -1
            b: 1
        delay:
          value:
            distribution: fixed
            value: 7

Item Required? Type/Format
method required "delayframe"
param_from_file required if TRUE, will look for param_place_file
param_place_file optional path to geoid-params parquet file, which indicates location specific risk values. Values in this file will override values in the config if there is overlap.
scenarios required user-defined scenario name
settings required See details below

outcomes::settings::[setting_name]

The settings for each scenario correspond to a set of different health outcome risks, most often just differences in the probability of death given infection (Pr(incidD|incidI)) and the probability of hospitalization given infection (Pr(incidH|incidI)). Each health outcome risk is referenced in relation to the outcome indicated in source. For example, the probability and delay in becoming a confirmed case (incidC) is most likely to be indexed off of the number and timing of infection (incidI).

Importantly, we note that incidI is automatically defined from the SEIR transmission model outputs, while the other compartment sources must be defined in the config before they are used.

Users must specific two metrics for each health outcome, probability and delay, while a duration is optional (e.g., duration of time spent in the hospital). It is also optional to specify a perturbation section (similar to perturbations specified in the NPI section) for a given health outcome and metric. If you want to perform inference (i.e., if perturbation is specified) on a given metric, that metric must be specified as a distribution (i.e., not fixed) and the range of support for the distribution represents the range of parameter space explored in the inference.

Item Required? Type/Format
(health outcome metric) required "incidH", "incidD", "incidICU", "incidVent", "incidC", corresponding to variable names
source required name of health outcome metric that is used as the reference point
probability required health outcome risk
probability::value required specifies whether the value is fixed or distributional and the parameters specific to that metric and distribution
probability::perturbation optional inference settings for the probability metric
delay required time delay between source and the specified health outcome
delay::value required specifies whether the value is fixed or distributional and the parameters specific to that metric and distribution
delay::perturbation optional inference settings for the time delay metric (coming soon)
duration optional duration that health outcome status endures
duration::value required specifies whether the value is fixed or distributional and the parameters specific to that metric and distribution
duration::perturbation optional inference settings for the duration metric (coming soon)

New filtering section

This section configures the settings for the inference algorithm. The below example shows the settings for some typical default settings, where the model is calibrated to the weekly incident deaths and weekly incident confirmed cases for each geoid. Statistics, hierarchical_stats_geo, and priors each have scenario names (e.g., sum_deaths, local_var_hierarchy, and local_var_prior, respectively).

filtering:
  simulations_per_slot: 350
  do_filtering: TRUE
  data_path: data/observed_data.csv
  likelihood_directory: importation/likelihood/
  statistics:
    sum_deaths:
      name: sum_deaths
      aggregator: sum ## function applied over the period
      period: "1 weeks"
      sim_var: incidD
      data_var: death_incid
      remove_na: TRUE
      add_one: FALSE
      likelihood:
        dist: sqrtnorm
        param: [.1]
    sum_confirmed:
      name: sum_confirmed
      aggregator: sum
      period: "1 weeks"
      sim_var: incidC
      data_var: confirmed_incid
      remove_na: TRUE
      add_one: FALSE
      likelihood:
        dist: sqrtnorm
        param: [.2]
  hierarchical_stats_geo:
    local_var_hierarchy:
      name: local_variance
      module: seir
      geo_group_col: USPS
      transform: none
    local_conf:
      name: probability_incidI_incidC
      module: hospitalization
      geo_group_col: USPS
      transform: logit
  priors:
    local_var_prior:
      name: local_variance
      module: seir
      likelihood:
        dist: normal
        param:
        - 0
        - 1

filtering settings

With inference model runs, the number of simulations nsimulations refers to the number of final model simulations that will be produced. The filtering$simulations_per_slot setting refers to the number of iterative simulations that will be run in order to produce a single final simulation (i.e., number of simulations in a single MCMC chain).

Item Required? Type/Format
simulations_per_slot required number of iterations in a single MCMC inference chain
do_filtering required TRUE if inference should be performed
data_path required file path where observed data are saved
likelihood_directory required folder path where likelihood evaluations will be stored as the inference algorithm runs
statistics required specifies which data will be used to calibrate the model. see filtering::statistics for details
hierarchical_stats_geo optional specifies whether a hierarchical structure should be applied to any inferred parameters. See filtering::hierarchical_stats_geo for details.
priors optional specifies prior distributions on inferred parameters. See filtering::priors for details

filtering::statistics

The statistics specified here are used to calibrate the model to empirical data. If multiple statistics are specified, this inference is performed jointly and they are weighted in the likelihood according to the number of data points and the variance of the proposal distribution.

Item Required? Type/Format
name required name of statistic, user defined
aggregator required function used to aggregate data over the period, usually sum or mean
period required duration over which data should be aggregated prior to use in the likelihood, may be specified in any number of days, weeks, months
sim_var required column name where model data can be found, from the hospitalization outcomes files
data_var required column where data can be found in data_path file
remove_na required logical
add_one required logical, TRUE if evaluating the log likelihood
likelihood::dist required distribution of the likelihood
likelihood::param required parameter value(s) for the likelihood distribution. These differ by distribution so check the code in inference/R/functions.R/logLikStat function.

filtering::hierarchical_stats_geo

The hierarchical settings specified here are used to group the inference of certain parameters together (similar to inference in "hierarchical" or "fixed/group effects" models). For example, users may desire to group all counties in a given state because they are geograhically proximate and impacted by the same statewide policies. The effect should be to make these inferred parameters follow a normal distribution and to observe shrinkage among the variance in these grouped estimates.

Item Required? Type/Format
scenario name required name of hierarchical scenario, user defined
name required name of the estimated parameter that will be grouped (e.g., the NPI scenario name or a standardized, combined health outcome name like probability_incidI_incidC)
module required name of the module where this parameter is estimated (important for finding the appropriate files)
geo_group_col required geodata column name that should be used to group parameter estimation
transform required type of transform that should be applied to the likelihood: "none" or "logit"

filtering::priors

It is now possible to specify prior values for inferred parameters. This will have the effect of speeding up model convergence.

Item Required? Type/Format
scenario name required name of prior scenario, user defined
name required name of NPI scenario or parameter that will have the prior
module required name of the module where this parameter is estimated
likelihood required specifies the distribution of the prior