Transitioning from the US COVID19 Forecast Hub

This overview shall help you get started quickly if you are already familiar with the procedures for the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. In case you notice an aspect that is missing please let us know by opening an issue.

What stays the same:

• The basic folder structure with a model-specific subfolder in data-processed (naming convention team-model).
• The forecast file format with point forecasts and 23 forecast quantiles.
• Case and death forecasts will be collected.
• The use of epi weeks running from Sunday to Saturday.
• The metadata format.
• The submission via GitHub pull requests (you just need to fork the covid19-forecast-hub-europe repository).
• All evaluation criteria which will be applied to your forecasts (weighted interval score, absolute error, interval coverage rates).
• The authoritative truth data source is JHU.
• The weekly submission deadline on Monday at 6pm ET (midnight CET).

What changes:

• Only incidence forecasts will be covered (i.e. k wk ahead inc death and k wk ahead inc case). Cumulative targets will not be covered.
• No hospitalization/ICU forecasts will be accepted.
• An (optional) additional column called scenario_id can be included. If included, this needs to be set to "forecast" in all rows for short-term forecasts. Other scenarios (e.g., on vaccination strategies) may be added in the future.
• At least in the beginning only national level forecasts will be accepted.
• Location codes are based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard. You can find the mapping of country names to ISO codes here.