Evaluation of the Effect of Environmental Parameters on the Spread of COVID-19: A Fuzzy Logic Approach

Abstract

In recent months, the world has experienced the outbreak and spread of a new infectious disease, COVID-19. The spread of this disease has been so severe, and even many developed countries have struggled to manage this situation. However, some countries, such as China and Australia, have shown success in taking effective steps towards tackling the crisis. So far, some preventive measures to contain the spread of infection have emerged. Numerous studies have been undertaken worldwide in parallel in order to develop strategies to contain the virus, as well as to determine climatic or atmospheric conditions favoring COVID-19 spread. In this research, an artificial intelligence (AI) system has been adopted to assess the effective role of various environmental conditions in the spread of COVID-19. Temperature, relative humidity (RH), and UV index (UVI) of some affected countries were considered as input parameters while the total number of infected people is taken as the output variable. After plotting all available data as linguistic variables, a relationship is established between temperature, RH, UVI, and the number of infected people. From the surface graph, it can be stated that in addition to UVI, temperature and RH have a significant impact on the number of affected people. The maximum and minimum temperatures as well as other parameters are considered on the basis of mean values.