Paper Title: "A rule-based Ensemble Approach for Diarrhoea Outbreak Prediction"

Student Author:

• Trịnh Thị Thanh Trúc – 19521059– HTTT2019 – Main Author

Supervising Instructor:

• MSc. Đỗ Duy Thanh

Paper Summary:

Gastrointestinal diseases, highly sensitive to water sources, are one of the leading causes of mortality and increased morbidity in children and are widespread in developing countries. Meanwhile, climate change along with extreme weather events is considered one of the main causes of water source pollution. Located in a tropical climate zone, Vietnam has a very high risk of outbreaks of such diseases. Therefore, the development of an early warning system for disease outbreaks is highly necessary. However, previous studies have only focused on predicting the rate/cases using some traditional forecasting models with limited performance. In this paper, the research focuses on predicting diarrhea outbreak periods for six provinces in Vietnam.

Some main contributions of the research are listed as follows: Experimental evaluation of 22 different statistical and advanced machine learning models to predict outbreak periods with the aim of providing a comprehensive view of the overall performance of various machine learning models for the future research in other fields. The study shows that many models such as SVM, XGBoost, and Decision Tree can predict outbreak periods more accurately than inferring them from regression results/case predictions like previous studies. Furthermore, predicting disease outbreak periods is a highly challenging task that all existing algorithms find difficult to predict accurately. Second, a new approach is proposed based on utilizing a set of rules introduced in the study to eliminate 10% to 40% of false positive predictions, increasing the model's prediction reliability.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervising instructor, MSc. Đỗ Duy Thanh, and especially to Dr. Nguyễn Đình Thuân and Dr. Mai Thái Sơn for their continuous guidance, support, and advice during my research and the publication of this scientific work. I would also like to thank Mr. Nguyễn Minh Nhựt and my colleagues in the FTISU research group for their valuable discussions and encouragement throughout the research process.

The RIVF Conference is an international conference in the field of Information Technology and Communications, a major international scientific event that brings together scientists and researchers in the fields of computer science and communication in Vietnam and the world, with the theme "Research, Innovation, and Vision for the Future" (RIVF). The RIVF Conference is listed in the reputable conference list as proposed by SCOPUS and ISI Web of Science. RIVF has gone through 16 editions, and 2023 marks the 17th edition. This is one of the highly prestigious scientific conferences in the field of Information Technology and Communications. The conference will be held in Hanoi in December 2023.

Further information: https://www.facebook.com/UIT.Fanpage/posts/pfbid0iNvBw78Y2mJrH9GZpKP2jQNy2DZbscCS1rGyUdPa1JUvu6xtwPQNt7MFNirT7BsXl

Written by: Ha Bang

Translated by: Ngoc Diem