IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfor/v38y2022i3p1197-1213.html

Anticipating special events in Emergency Department forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • Rostami-Tabar, Bahman
  • Ziel, Florian

Abstract

Accurate daily forecast of Emergency Department (ED) attendance helps roster planners in allocating available resources more effectively and potentially influences staffing. Since special events affect human behaviours, they may increase or decrease the demand for ED services. Therefore, it is crucial to model their impact and use them to forecast future attendance to improve roster planning and avoid reactive strategies. In this paper, we propose, for the first time, a forecasting model to generate both point and probabilistic daily forecast of ED attendance. We model the impact of special events on ED attendance by considering real-life ED data. We benchmark the accuracy of our model against three time-series techniques and a regression model that does not consider special events. We show that the proposed model outperforms its benchmarks across all horizons for both point and probabilistic forecasts. Results also show that our model is more robust with an increasing forecasting horizon. Moreover, we provide evidence on how different types of special events may increase or decrease ED attendance. Our model can easily be adapted for use not only by EDs but also by other health services. It could also be generalised to include more types of special events.

Suggested Citation

  • Rostami-Tabar, Bahman & Ziel, Florian, 2022. "Anticipating special events in Emergency Department forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1197-1213.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:38:y:2022:i:3:p:1197-1213
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2020.01.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207020300017
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2020.01.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bartosz Uniejewski & Jakub Nowotarski & Rafał Weron, 2016. "Automated Variable Selection and Shrinkage for Day-Ahead Electricity Price Forecasting," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-22, August.
    2. Ziel, Florian & Liu, Bidong, 2016. "Lasso estimation for GEFCom2014 probabilistic electric load forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 1029-1037.
    3. Ziel, Florian, 2019. "Quantile regression for the qualifying match of GEFCom2017 probabilistic load forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1400-1408.
    4. Boylan, John E. & Goodwin, Paul & Mohammadipour, Maryam & Syntetos, Aris A., 2015. "Reproducibility in forecasting research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 79-90.
    5. Ziel, Florian, 2016. "Iteratively reweighted adaptive lasso for conditional heteroscedastic time series with applications to AR–ARCH type processes," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 773-793.
    6. Kuang Xu & Carri W. Chan, 2016. "Using Future Information to Reduce Waiting Times in the Emergency Department via Diversion," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 314-331, July.
    7. Hong, Tao & Pinson, Pierre & Fan, Shu & Zareipour, Hamidreza & Troccoli, Alberto & Hyndman, Rob J., 2016. "Probabilistic energy forecasting: Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2014 and beyond," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 896-913.
    8. Durbin, James & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2012. "Time Series Analysis by State Space Methods," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199641178.
    9. Izady, Navid & Worthington, Dave, 2012. "Setting staffing requirements for time dependent queueing networks: The case of accident and emergency departments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(3), pages 531-540.
    10. Rafal Weron & Florian Ziel, 2018. "Electricity price forecasting," HSC Research Reports HSC/18/08, Hugo Steinhaus Center, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.
    11. Cheang, B. & Li, H. & Lim, A. & Rodrigues, B., 2003. "Nurse rostering problems--a bibliographic survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(3), pages 447-460, December.
    12. Haben, Stephen & Giasemidis, Georgios & Ziel, Florian & Arora, Siddharth, 2019. "Short term load forecasting and the effect of temperature at the low voltage level," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1469-1484.
    13. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B., 2006. "Another look at measures of forecast accuracy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 679-688.
    14. Ziel, Florian & Weron, Rafał, 2018. "Day-ahead electricity price forecasting with high-dimensional structures: Univariate vs. multivariate modeling frameworks," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 396-420.
    15. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    16. Franses, Philip Hans, 2016. "A note on the Mean Absolute Scaled Error," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 20-22.
    17. Gneiting, Tilmann & Raftery, Adrian E., 2007. "Strictly Proper Scoring Rules, Prediction, and Estimation," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 102, pages 359-378, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abreu, Paulo & Santos, Daniel & Barbosa-Povoa, Ana, 2023. "Data-driven forecasting for operational planning of emergency medical services," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    2. Rostami-Tabar, Bahman & Ali, Mohammad M. & Hong, Tao & Hyndman, Rob J. & Porter, Michael D. & Syntetos, Aris, 2022. "Forecasting for social good," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1245-1257.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katarzyna Maciejowska & Bartosz Uniejewski & Rafa{l} Weron, 2022. "Forecasting Electricity Prices," Papers 2204.11735, arXiv.org.
    2. Rafal Weron & Florian Ziel, 2018. "Electricity price forecasting," HSC Research Reports HSC/18/08, Hugo Steinhaus Center, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.
    3. Lago, Jesus & Marcjasz, Grzegorz & De Schutter, Bart & Weron, Rafał, 2021. "Forecasting day-ahead electricity prices: A review of state-of-the-art algorithms, best practices and an open-access benchmark," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    4. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2020. "The M4 Competition: 100,000 time series and 61 forecasting methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 54-74.
    5. Zimmermann, Monika & Ziel, Florian, 2025. "Efficient mid-term forecasting of hourly electricity load using generalized additive models," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 388(C).
    6. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    7. Ziel, Florian & Steinert, Rick, 2018. "Probabilistic mid- and long-term electricity price forecasting," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 251-266.
    8. Jens Kley-Holsteg & Florian Ziel, 2020. "Probabilistic Multi-Step-Ahead Short-Term Water Demand Forecasting with Lasso," Papers 2005.04522, arXiv.org.
    9. Monika Zimmermann & Florian Ziel, 2024. "Efficient mid-term forecasting of hourly electricity load using generalized additive models," Papers 2405.17070, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    10. Grzegorz Marcjasz & Tomasz Serafin & Rafał Weron, 2018. "Selection of Calibration Windows for Day-Ahead Electricity Price Forecasting," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-20, September.
    11. Micha{l} Narajewski & Florian Ziel, 2020. "Ensemble Forecasting for Intraday Electricity Prices: Simulating Trajectories," Papers 2005.01365, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.
    12. Florian Ziel & Kevin Berk, 2019. "Multivariate Forecasting Evaluation: On Sensitive and Strictly Proper Scoring Rules," Papers 1910.07325, arXiv.org.
    13. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Chen, Zhi & Gaba, Anil & Tsetlin, Ilia & Winkler, Robert L., 2022. "The M5 uncertainty competition: Results, findings and conclusions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1365-1385.
    14. Makridakis, Spyros & Hyndman, Rob J. & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2020. "Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 15-28.
    15. Gianfreda, Angelica & Ravazzolo, Francesco & Rossini, Luca, 2020. "Comparing the forecasting performances of linear models for electricity prices with high RES penetration," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 974-986.
    16. Peru Muniain & Florian Ziel, 2018. "Probabilistic Forecasting in Day-Ahead Electricity Markets: Simulating Peak and Off-Peak Prices," Papers 1810.08418, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2019.
    17. Dumas, Jonathan & Wehenkel, Antoine & Lanaspeze, Damien & Cornélusse, Bertrand & Sutera, Antonio, 2022. "A deep generative model for probabilistic energy forecasting in power systems: normalizing flows," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    18. Grzegorz Marcjasz, 2020. "Forecasting Electricity Prices Using Deep Neural Networks: A Robust Hyper-Parameter Selection Scheme," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-18, September.
    19. Arkadiusz Jędrzejewski & Grzegorz Marcjasz & Rafał Weron, 2021. "Importance of the Long-Term Seasonal Component in Day-Ahead Electricity Price Forecasting Revisited: Parameter-Rich Models Estimated via the LASSO," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-17, June.
    20. Marcjasz, Grzegorz & Uniejewski, Bartosz & Weron, Rafał, 2020. "Probabilistic electricity price forecasting with NARX networks: Combine point or probabilistic forecasts?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 466-479.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:38:y:2022:i:3:p:1197-1213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijforecast .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.