The research on TBATS and ELM models for prediction of human brucellosis cases in mainland China: a time series study

BACKGROUND: Human brucellosis is a serious public health concern in China. The objective of this study is to develop a suitable model for forecasting human brucellosis cases in mainland China. METHODS: Data on monthly human brucellosis cases from January 2012 to December 2021 in 31 provinces and municipalities in mainland China were obtained from the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China website. The TBATS and ELM models were constructed. The MAE, MSE, MAPE, and RMSE were calculated to evaluate the prediction performance of the two models. RESULTS: The optimal TBATS model was TBATS (1, {0,0}, -, {< 12,4 >}) and the lowest AIC value was 1854.703. In the optimal TBATS model, {0,0} represents the ARIMA (0,0) model, {< 12,4 >} are the parameters of the seasonal periods and the corresponding number of Fourier terms, respectively, and the parameters of the Box-Cox transformation ω are 1. The optimal ELM model hidden layer number was 33 and the R-squared value was 0.89. The ELM model provided lower values of MAE, MSE, MAPE, and RMSE for both the fitting and forecasting performance. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the forecasting performance of ELM model outperforms the TBATS model in predicting human brucellosis between January 2012 and December 2021 in mainland China. Forecasts of the ELM model can help provide early warnings and more effective prevention and control measures for human brucellosis in mainland China. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07919-w.