CEL: A Continual Learning Model for Disease Outbreak Prediction by Leveraging Domain Adaptation via Elastic Weight Consolidation

Continual learning is the ability of a model to learn over time without forgetting previous knowledge. Therefore, adapting new data in dynamic fields like disease outbreak prediction is paramount. Deep neural networks are prone to error due to catastrophic forgetting. This study introduces a novel CEL model for Continual Learning by leveraging domain adaptation via Elastic weight consolidation (EWC). This model aims to mitigate the catastrophic forgetting phenomenon in a domain incremental setting. The Fisher information matrix (FIM) is constructed with EWC to develop a regularization term that penalizes changes to essential parameters. We conducted experiments on three distinct diseases, influenza, mpox, and measles, with customized metrics. The high R-squared values during evaluation and reevaluation outperform the other state-of-the-art models in several contexts. The results indicate that CEL adapts well to incremental data. CEL's robustness emphasizes its minimal 65% forgetting rate and 18% higher memory stability compared to existing benchmark studies. This study highlights CEL's versatility in disease outbreak prediction by addressing evolving data with temporal patterns. It offers a valuable model for proactive disease control with accurate and timely predictions.