TLife-LSTM: Forecasting Future COVID-19 Progression with Topological Signatures of Atmospheric Conditions

Segovia-Dominguez, I.; Zhen, Z.; Wagh, R.; Lee, H.; Gel, Y. R.

Understanding the impact of atmospheric conditions on SARS-CoV2 is critical to model COVID-19 dynamics and sheds a light on the future spread around the world. Furthermore, geographic distributions of expected clinical severity of COVID-19 may be closely linked to prior history of respiratory diseases and changes in humidity, temperature, and air quality. In this context, we postulate that by tracking topological features of atmospheric conditions over time, we can provide a quantifiable structural distribution of atmospheric changes that are likely to be related to COVID-19 dynamics. As such, we apply the machinery of persistence homology on time series of graphs to extract topological signatures and to follow geographical changes in relative humidity and temperature. We develop an integrative machine learning framework named Topological Lifespan LSTM (TLife-LSTM) and test its predictive capabilities on forecasting the dynamics of SARS-CoV2 cases. We validate our framework using the number of confirmed cases and hospitalization rates recorded in the states of Washington and California in the USA. Our results demonstrate the predictive potential of TLife-LSTM in forecasting the dynamics of COVID-19 and modeling its complex spatio-temporal spread dynamics. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.