rplanes features a Shiny app that allows users to
interact with package functions to perform plausibility analysis for
epidemiological signals. The rplanes Explorer app is
developed and maintained as part of the R package. Users can launch the
app locally or use it on a hosted Shiny server by running the
rplanes_explorer() function.
The application allows users to run plausibility analysis with several steps:
The app includes example data to help users familiarize themselves with the plausibility analysis features. The example is based on observed data originally obtained from healthdata.gov and is the flu admissions (“previous_day_admission_influenza_confirmed” field) aggregated by location and epidemiological week. The data includes all states and national resolution for the United States. A selection of the observed data used in the example is provided below:
| date | epiyear | epiweek | location | flu.admits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-02-12 | 2022 | 6 | US | 1256 |
| 2022-02-19 | 2022 | 7 | US | 1573 |
| 2022-02-26 | 2022 | 8 | US | 1666 |
| 2022-03-05 | 2022 | 9 | US | 1942 |
| 2022-03-12 | 2022 | 10 | US | 2247 |
| 2022-03-19 | 2022 | 11 | US | 2878 |
| 2022-03-26 | 2022 | 12 | US | 3008 |
| 2022-04-02 | 2022 | 13 | US | 3182 |
| 2022-04-09 | 2022 | 14 | US | 3331 |
| . | . | . | . | . |
The example forecast data set evaluated was selected from the CDC FluSight hospitalization forecasts submitted during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 influenza seasons. A selection of the forecast data used in the example is provided below:
| forecast_date | target | target_end_date | location | type | quantile | value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-10-31 | 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-05 | 02 | point | NA | 6 |
| 2022-10-31 | 2 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-12 | 02 | point | NA | 5 |
| 2022-10-31 | 3 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-19 | 02 | point | NA | 5 |
| 2022-10-31 | 4 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-26 | 02 | point | NA | 5 |
| 2022-10-31 | 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-05 | 02 | quantile | 0.01 | 0 |
| 2022-10-31 | 2 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-12 | 02 | quantile | 0.01 | 0 |
| 2022-10-31 | 3 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-19 | 02 | quantile | 0.01 | 0 |
| 2022-10-31 | 4 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-26 | 02 | quantile | 0.01 | 0 |
| 2022-10-31 | 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp | 2022-11-05 | 02 | quantile | 0.025 | 0 |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
The app includes inputs for the type of signal to be evaluated, file uploads (as needed), and parameter modifications. Once analysis is complete, the output of the analysis is displayed visually to the user as a collection of plots and tables. The “Help” tab on the app includes more detailed information on all of the inputs and outputs for the explorer app.
The app is delivered as a function in the rplanes
package. To launch the app, users can run the
rplanes_explorer() function. Note that this function wraps
shiny::runApp() and inherits arguments. For example, adding
an argument for launch.browser = TRUE will open the app in
a web browser and setting port = 80 will run the app at
port 80 on the localhost.