Optimizing Hammerstein-Wiener Model for Forecasting Confirmed Cases of Covid-19.

Noise poses challenge to nonlinear Hammerstein- Wiener (HW) subsystem model application, because HW subsystem need large number of parameter interactions. However, flexibility, soft computing, and automatic adjustment to dynamic observation for best model fitting make it potential for forecasting nonlinear data. In this article, we adopted improved HW inference from Levenberg-Marquardt optimization algorithm to optimize HW subsystem and to select best model parameters. Therefore, the adopted model is tested on COVID- 19 confirmed reported cases, to estimate transmission rate of COVID-19 virus for period from 15th March 2020 to 29th April 2020. Model validation is carried out on small dataset, which outperforms some existing models. The adopted model is further evaluated using statistical metrics and reported best accuracy of 0.127 and 0.998 for Mean Absolute percentage error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R²) respectively, with best model complexity of 1.86. The obtained results are promising enough in predicting spread of COVID-19 virus and may inspire as guidance to relax lockdown restriction policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]