Data Analysis and Related Applications, Volume 2

14Statistical Process Monitoring Techniques for Covid-19

Control charts constitute a useful scientific tool for exploring and monitoring the variability present in a process and determining whether the results of their implementation are due to a deterministic action or if it is purely random. In the former case, appropriate mechanisms have to be employed for (permanently) eliminating the causes that led to this problem. As a result, control charts could be a key tool for ensuring quality and at the same time minimizing (deterministic) variation. Having the aforementioned in mind, in this work, we implement a reliable and accurate mechanism based on Statistical Process Monitoring techniques for studying the behavior of Coronavirus 2019 disease across countries that belong to the wider area of the Mediterranean.

14.1. Introduction

The global negative impact of Coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) disease in vital sustainability points of social functionality, such as health and economics, is indisputable. State authorities and societies in general have found themselves confronted with new regularities while trying to understand and measure the behavior of this new disease. To this end, several researchers from various scientific fields, such as medicine and biosurveillance, have used a plethora of tools in order to achieve this.

Statistical process monitoring (SPM) constitutes a method of quality control which employs various powerful tools to monitor and control a process. Such tools ...