Socioeconomic disparities and COVID-19: the causal connections
Auburn University（奥本大学）；DESY（德国电子同步加速器研究所）；Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin（柏林洪堡大学）；BASIS Independent Silicon Valley（贝赛思独立学校硅谷校区）；Stanford Online High School（斯坦福在线高中）；NTNU（挪威科技大学）；SimulaMet（SimulaMet研究所）
Tannista Banerjee, Ayan Paul, Vishak Srikanth, Inga Strümke
The analysis of causation is a challenging task that can be approached in various ways. With the increasing use of machine learning based models in computational socioeconomics, explaining these models while taking causal connections into account is a necessity. In this work, we advocate the use of an explanatory framework from cooperative game theory augmented with $do$ calculus, namely causal Shapley values. Using causal Shapley values, we analyze socioeconomic disparities that have a causal link to the spread of COVID-19 in the USA. We study several phases of the disease spread to show how the causal connections change over time. We perform a causal analysis using random effects models and discuss the correspondence between the two methods to verify our results. We show the distinct advantages a non-linear machine learning models have over linear models when performing a multivariate analysis, especially since the machine learning models can map out non-linear correlations in the data. In addition, the causal Shapley values allow for including the causal structure in the variable importance computed for the machine learning model.
This paper investigates whether socioeconomic factors are important for the hurricane performance of the electric power system in Florida. The investigation is performed using the Random Forest classifier with Mean Decrease of Accuracy (MDA) for measuring the importance of a set of factors that include hazard intensity, time to recovery from maximum impact, and socioeconomic characteristics of the affected population. The data set (at county scale) for this study includes socioeconomic variables from the 5-year American Community Survey (ACS), as well as wind velocities, and outage data of fiv…
Disadvantaged groups around the world have suffered and endured higher mortality during the current COVID-19 pandemic. This contrast disparity suggests that socioeconomic and health-related factors may drive inequality in disease outcome. To identify these factors correlated with COVID-19 outcome, country aggregate data provided by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission subjected to correlation analysis. Socioeconomic and health-related variables were used to predict mortality in the top 5 most affected countries using ridge regression and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models. Our data reveal th…
This study explored how population mobility flows form commuting networks across US counties and influence the spread of COVID-19. We utilized 3-level mixed effects negative binomial regression models to estimate the impact of network COVID-19 exposure on county confirmed cases and deaths over time. We also conducted weighting-based analyses to estimate the causal effect of network exposure. Results showed that commuting networks matter for COVID-19 deaths and cases, net of spatial proximity, socioeconomic, and demographic factors. Different local racial and ethnic concentrations are also asso…
This paper applies eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods to investigate the socioeconomic disparities in COVID patient mortality. An Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) prediction model is built based on a de-identified Austin area hospital dataset to predict the mortality of COVID-19 patients. We apply two XAI methods, Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Locally Interpretable Model Agnostic Explanations (LIME), to compare the global and local interpretation of feature importance. This paper demonstrates the advantages of using XAI which shows the feature importance and decisi…
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee（鲁尔基印度理工学院）；UIC（伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校）；College of Medicine, UIC（伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校医学院）
COVID19 is now one of the most leading causes of death in the United States. Systemic health, social and economic disparities have put the minorities and economically poor communities at a higher risk than others. There is an immediate requirement to develop a reliable measure of county-level vulnerabilities that can capture the heterogeneity of both vulnerable communities and the COVID19 pandemic. This study reports a COVID19 Vulnerability Index (C19VI) for identification and mapping of vulnerable counties in the United States. We proposed a Random Forest machine learning based COVID19 vulner…
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically catalyzed the proliferation of e-shopping. The dramatic growth of e-shopping will undoubtedly cause significant impacts on travel demand. As a result, transportation modeller's ability to model e-shopping demand is becoming increasingly important. This study developed models to predict household' weekly home delivery frequencies. We used both classical econometric and machine learning techniques to obtain the best model. It is found that socioeconomic factors such as having an online grocery membership, household members' average age, the percentage of male h…
The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic is affecting every facet of human lives (e.g., public health, education, economy, transportation, and the environment). This novel pandemic and citywide implemented lockdown measures are affecting virus transmission, people's travel patterns, and air quality. Many studies have been conducted to predict the COVID-19 diffusion, assess the impacts of the pandemic on human mobility and air quality, and assess the impacts of lockdown measures on viral spread with a range of Machine Learning (ML) techniques. This review study aims to analyze results from past res…
Alan Turing Institute（艾伦·图灵研究所）；Ada Lovelace Institute（阿达·洛芙莱斯研究所）；University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）
Among the most damaging characteristics of the covid-19 pandemic has been its disproportionate effect on disadvantaged communities. As the outbreak has spread globally, factors such as systemic racism, marginalisation, and structural inequality have created path dependencies that have led to poor health outcomes. These social determinants of infectious disease and vulnerability to disaster have converged to affect already disadvantaged communities with higher levels of economic instability, disease exposure, infection severity, and death. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are an import…
At the end of 2019, the latest novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 emerged as a significant acute respiratory disease that has become a global pandemic. Countries like Brazil have had difficulty in dealing with the virus due to the high socioeconomic difference of states and municipalities. Therefore, this study presents a new approach using different machine learning and deep learning algorithms applied to Brazilian COVID-19 data. First, a clustering algorithm is used to identify counties with similar sociodemographic behavior, while Benford's law is used to check for data manipulation. Based on the…
Innovations in data science and AI/ML have a central role to play in supporting global efforts to combat COVID-19. The versatility of AI/ML technologies enables scientists and technologists to address an impressively broad range of biomedical, epidemiological, and socioeconomic challenges. This wide-reaching scientific capacity, however, also raises a diverse array of ethical challenges. The need for researchers to act quickly and globally in tackling SARS-CoV-2 demands unprecedented practices of open research and responsible data sharing at a time when innovation ecosystems are hobbled by pro…
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory（太平洋西北国家实验室）；Michigan State University（密歇根州立大学）
Since the increasing outspread of COVID-19 in the U.S., with the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world as of September 2020, most states in the country have enforced travel restrictions resulting in sharp reductions in mobility. However, the overall impact and long-term implications of this crisis to travel and mobility remain uncertain. To this end, this study develops an analytical framework that determines and analyzes the most dominant factors impacting human mobility and travel in the U.S. during this pandemic. In particular, the study uses Granger causality to determi…
