The effect of population and tourism factors on Covid-19 cases in Italy: Visual data analysis and forecasting approach

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, the new coronavirus disease (Covid-19), a deadly viral illness, is declared as a public health emergency situation by WHO. Consequently, it is accepted as pandemic that affected millions of people worldwide. Italy is one of the most affected countries by Covid-19 disease among the world. In this article, our main goal is to investigate the effect of intensity of Covid-19 cases based on the population size and tourism factors in certain regions of Italy by visual data analysis. The regions of Lombardia, Veneto, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Piemonte are the top five regions covering 58.50% of the total Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Italy. It has been shown by visual data analysis that population and tourism factors play an important role in the spread of Covid-19 cases in these five regions. In addition, a prediction model was created using Bi-LSTM and ARIMA algorithms to forecast the number of Covid-19 cases occurring in these five regions in order to take early action. We can conclude that these northern regions have been affected mostly by Covid-19 and the distribution of the resident population and tourist flow factors affected the number of Covid-19 cases in Italy.