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Create an epidemic curve plot or bin/count observations by date periods

Source: R/geom_epicurve.R
geom_epicurve.Rd

Creates a epicurve plot for visualizing epidemic case counts in outbreaks (epidemiological curves). An epicurve is a bar plot, where every case is outlined. geom_epicurve additionally provides date-based aggregation of cases (e.g. per week or month and many more) using bin_by_date.

  • For week aggregation both isoweek (World + ECDC) and epiweek (US CDC) are supported.

  • stat_bin_date and its alias stat_date_count provide date based binning only. After binning the by date with bin_by_date, these stats behave like ggplot2::stat_count.

  • geom_epicurve_text adds text labels to cases on epicurve plots.

  • geom_epicurve_point adds points/shapes to cases on epicurve plots.

Usage

geom_epicurve(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "epicurve",
  position = "stack",
  date_resolution = NULL,
  week_start = getOption("lubridate.week.start", 1),
  width = NULL,
  relative.width = 1,
  ...,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

stat_bin_date(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  geom = "line",
  position = "identity",
  date_resolution = NULL,
  week_start = getOption("lubridate.week.start", 1),
  fill_gaps = FALSE,
  ...,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

stat_date_count(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  geom = "line",
  position = "identity",
  date_resolution = NULL,
  week_start = getOption("lubridate.week.start", 1),
  fill_gaps = FALSE,
  ...,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

geom_epicurve_text(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "epicurve",
  vjust = 0.5,
  date_resolution = NULL,
  week_start = getOption("lubridate.week.start", 1),
  ...,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

geom_epicurve_point(
  mapping = NULL,
  data = NULL,
  stat = "epicurve",
  vjust = 0.5,
  date_resolution = NULL,
  week_start = getOption("lubridate.week.start", 1),
  ...,
  na.rm = FALSE,
  show.legend = NA,
  inherit.aes = TRUE
)

Arguments

mapping

Set of aesthetic mappings created by aes. Commonly used mappings:

  • x or y: date or datetime. Numeric is technically supported.

  • fill: for colouring groups.

  • weight: if data is already aggregated (e.g., case counts).

data

The data frame containing the variables for the plot

stat

For the geoms, use "epicurve" (default) to outline individual cases, or "bin_date" to aggregate data by group. For large datasets, "bin_date" is recommended for better performance by drawing less rectangles.

position

Position adjustment. Currently supports "stack" for geom_epicurve().

date_resolution

Character string specifying the time unit for date aggregation. If NULL (default), no date binning is performed. Possible values include: "hour", "day", "week", "month", "bimonth", "season", "quarter", "halfyear", "year". Special values:

  • "isoweek": ISO week standard (week starts Monday, week_start = 1)

  • "epiweek": US CDC epiweek standard (week starts Sunday, week_start = 7)

  • "isoyear": ISO year (corresponding year of the ISO week, differs from year by 1-3 days)

  • "epiyear": Epidemiological year (corresponding year of the epiweek, differs from year by 1-3 days) Defaults to NULL, i.e. no binning.

week_start

Integer specifying the start of the week (1 = Monday, 7 = Sunday). Only used when date_resolution involves weeks. Defaults to 1 (Monday). Overridden by "isoweek" (1) and "epiweek" (7) settings.

width

Numeric value specifying the width of the bars. If NULL, calculated based on date_resolution and relative.width.

relative.width

Numeric value between 0 and 1 adjusting the relative width of bars. Defaults to 1

...

Other arguments passed to layer. For example:

  • colour: Colour of the outlines around cases. Disable with colour = NA. Defaults to "white".

  • linewidth: Width of the case outlines.

For geom_epicurve_text() additional geom_text arguments are supported:

  • fontface: Font face for text labels: one of "plain", "bold", "italic", "bold.italic".

  • family: The font family.

  • size: The font size.

na.rm

If FALSE, the default, missing values are removed with a warning. If TRUE, missing values are silently removed.

show.legend

logical. Should this layer be included in the legends? NA, the default, includes if any aesthetics are mapped. FALSE never includes, and TRUE always includes. It can also be a named logical vector to finely select the aesthetics to display.

inherit.aes

If FALSE, overrides the default aesthetics, rather than combining with them. This is most useful for helper functions that define both data and aesthetics and shouldn't inherit behaviour from the default plot specification, e.g. borders().

geom

The geometric object to use to display the data for this layer. When using a stat_*() function to construct a layer, the geom argument can be used to override the default coupling between stats and geoms.

fill_gaps

Logical; If TRUE, gaps in the time series will be filled with a count of 0. Often needed for line charts.

vjust

Vertical justification of the text or shape. Value between 0 and 1. Used by geom_epicurve_text and geom_epicurve_point to control vertical positioning within the case rectangles. Defaults to 0.5 (center).

Value

A ggplot2 geom layer that can be added to a plot

Details

Epi Curves are a public health tool for outbreak investigation. For more details see the references.

References

See also

scale_y_cases_5er(), geom_vline_year()

Examples

# Basic epicurve with dates
library(ggplot2)
set.seed(1)

plot_data_epicurve_imp <- data.frame(
  date = rep(as.Date("2023-12-01") + ((0:300) * 1), times = rpois(301, 0.5))
)

ggplot(plot_data_epicurve_imp, aes(x = date, weight = 2)) +
  geom_vline_year(break_type = "week") +
  geom_epicurve(date_resolution = "week") +
  labs(title = "Epicurve Example") +
  scale_y_cases_5er() +
  # Correct ISOWeek labels for week-year
  scale_x_date(date_breaks = "4 weeks", date_labels = "W%V'%g") +
  coord_equal(ratio = 7) + # Use coord_equal for square boxes. 'ratio' are the days per week.
  theme_bw()


# Categorical epicurve
library(tidyr)
library(outbreaks)

sars_canada_2003 |> # SARS dataset from outbreaks
  pivot_longer(starts_with("cases"), names_prefix = "cases_", names_to = "origin") |>
  ggplot(aes(x = date, weight = value, fill = origin)) +
  geom_epicurve(date_resolution = "week") +
  scale_x_date(date_labels = "W%V'%g", date_breaks = "2 weeks") +
  scale_y_cases_5er() +
  theme_classic()