Chikungunya Modeling Challenge

This site presents the simple model we used for our winning solution to the DARPA Chikungunya Challenge, whose goal was to predict the spread of chikungunya in the Americas. Specifically, participants had to submit predictions for the number of cases in each country and for peak incidence between September 2014 and February 2015.

A Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed in MATLAB may be downloaded from the GUI page. It allows the user to choose any of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) countries for which CHIK data is available, to select the type of model and associated parameters for each country, to compare predictions with observed data, and to export parameters and predictions to an Excel file. The input file has been updated to include reported data until May 08, 2015. The preset parameter values are those we used for our last submission.

For information on the model, its applicability, and its results for PAHO countries, the reader is referred to the documentation page of this site.

Movies showing the spread of chikungunya in the Americas and a comparison of our predictions with actual data are available on the chikungunya information page and on the model documentation page, respectively.

Finally, a copy of the poster for our solution to this challenge may be downloaded in PDF format from the menu on the left.


Our Team

  • Joceline Lega, Professor of Mathematics, The University of Arizona
  • Heidi Brown, Assistant Professor of Public Health, The University of Arizona

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