journal article·2026-02-22Open access

MV-RiskNet: Multi-View Attention-Based Deep Learning Model for Regional Epidemic Risk Prediction and Mapping

Beyzanur Okudan, Abdullah Ammar Karcioglu

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 4

Abstract

Regional epidemic risk prediction requires holistic modeling of heterogeneous data sources such as demographic structure, health capacity, geographical features and human mobility. In this study, a unique and multi-modal epidemiological data set integrating demographic, health, geographic and mobility indicators of Türkiye and its neighboring countries was collected. Türkiye’s neighboring countries are Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, and Iraq. This dataset, created by combining raw data from these neighboring countries, provides a comprehensive regional representation that allows for both quantitative classification and spatial mapping of epidemiological risk. To address the class imbalance problem, Conditional GAN (CGAN), a class-conditional synthetic example generation approach that enhances high-risk category representation was used. In this study, we proposed a multi-view deep learning model named MV-RiskNet, which effectively models the multi-dimensional data structure by processing each view into independent subnetworks and integrating the representations with an attention-based fusion mechanism for regional epidemic risk prediction. Experimental studies were compared using Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Autoencoder classifier, and Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) models. The proposed MV-RiskNet with CGAN model achieved better results compared to other models, with 97.22% accuracy and 97.40% F1-score. The generated risk maps reveal regional clustering patterns in a spatially consistent manner, while attention analyses show that demographic and geographic features are the dominant determinants, while mobility plays a complementary role, especially in high-risk regions.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Machine Learning in Healthcare · Data-Driven Disease Surveillance · Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Department of Software Engineering, Ataturk University, Erzurum 25240, Turkey

References (31)

Show source-provided references
1. The mathematics of infectious diseases10.1137/S0036144500371907 ↗
2. A contribution to the mathematical theory of epidemics
3. Population flow drives spatio-temporal distribution of COVID-19 in China10.1038/s41586-020-2284-y ↗
4. Time series forecasting of COVID-19 transmission using LSTM10.1016/j.chaos.2020.109864 ↗
5. Spatial analysis and GIS in the study of COVID-19: A review10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140033 ↗
6. GIS-based spatial modeling of COVID-19 incidence10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138884 ↗
7. Spatial epidemic dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak in China10.1016/j.ijid.2020.03.076 ↗
8. Mollalo, A., Vahedi, B., and Rivera, K.M. (2020). Spatial modeling of COVID-19 incidence rates using GIS-based methods: A global review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 17.10.3390/ijerph17124204 ↗
9. The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China10.1126/science.abb4218 ↗
10. The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak10.1126/science.aba9757 ↗
11. GIS-based spatio-temporal analysis and modeling of COVID-19 incidence rates in Europe10.1016/j.sste.2022.100498 ↗
12. Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia10.1056/NEJMoa2001316 ↗
13. Deep learning methods for forecasting COVID-19 time-series data: A comparative study10.1016/j.chaos.2020.110121 ↗
14. COVID-19 future forecasting using supervised machine learning models10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2997311 ↗
15. Spatial modeling of COVID-19 incidence in the United States: A spatial regression approach
16. Short-term forecasting COVID-19 cumulative confirmed cases: Perspectives for Brazil10.1016/j.chaos.2020.109853 ↗
17. Guo, Z., Lin, Q., and Meng, X. (2023). A Comparative Study on Deep Learning Models for COVID-19 Forecast. Healthcare, 11.10.3390/healthcare11172400 ↗
18. Underdetection of cases of COVID-19 in France threatens epidemic control10.1038/s41586-020-03095-6 ↗
19. Public mobility data enables COVID-19 forecasting and management at local and global scales10.1038/s41598-021-92892-8 ↗
20. Deep multimodal learning: A survey on recent advances and trends10.1109/MSP.2017.2738401 ↗
21. Multimodal deep learning for biomedical data fusion: A systematic review10.1093/bib/bbab569 ↗
22. Deep multimodal data fusion: A survey
23. A survey on deep learning for multimodal data fusion10.1162/neco_a_01273 ↗
24. Multimodal machine learning: A survey and taxonomy10.1109/TPAMI.2018.2798607 ↗
25. Deep multi-view learning methods: A review10.1016/j.neucom.2021.03.090 ↗
26. Examining the association between socio-demographic composition and COVID-19 fatalities in the European region using spatial regression approach10.1016/j.scs.2020.102418 ↗
27. Xiong, Y., Wang, Y., Chen, F., and Zhu, M. (2020). Spatial statistics and influencing factors of the COVID-19 epidemic at both prefecture and county levels in Hubei Province, China. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 17.10.3390/ijerph17113903 ↗
28. Razavi-Termeh, S.V., Samadi, R., Heidarzadeh, N., and Choubin, B. (2021). COVID-19 risk mapping with considering socio-economic criteria using machine learning algorithms. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 18.10.3390/ijerph18189657 ↗
29. Random Forests10.1023/A:1010933404324 ↗
30. A review on methods and applications in multimodal deep learning10.1145/3545572 ↗
31. COVID-19 infection inference with graph neural networks10.1038/s41598-023-38314-3 ↗