Giving Compass' Take:

• Sonia Fernandez explains how researchers used AI techniques to create a new COVID-19 forecasting tool that provides information at the local level. 

• How can funders help to improve and boost the use of tools like this? How can this technology help you guide your giving? 

• Find COVID-19 funds to support in your area. 

Artificial intelligence techniques have inspired a new COVID-19 forecasting model provide timely information at a more localized level.

The researchers say that officials and anyone in the public can use in their decision-making processes.

“We are all overwhelmed by the data, most of which is provided at national and state levels,” says Xifeng Yan, an associate professor of and chair in computer science at the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Yan and Wang developed an innovative forecasting algorithm based on a deep learning model called Transformer. The model is driven by an attention mechanism that intuitively learns how to forecast by learning what time period in the past to look at and what data is the most important and relevant.

“If we are trying to forecast for a specific region, like Santa Barbara County, our algorithm compares the growth curves of COVID-19 cases across different regions over a period of time to determine the most-similar regions. It then weighs these regions to forecast cases in the target region,” explains Yan.

Read the full article about COVID-19 forecasting by Sonia Fernandez at Futurity.