malariasimple: An R package for fast simulations of malaria transmission.

Abstract

Process-based malaria transmission models are important tools for evaluating intervention strategies, quantifying uncertainty, and informing malaria control policy. Individual-based models such as malariasimulation are computationally demanding, which limits their practicality for applications that require large numbers of simulation runs. In this paper we present malariasimple, a simplified, compartmental model implemented as an R package which approximates the epidemiological structure and parameter definitions of malariasimulation while operating at a fraction of the computational cost. Across a range of transmission intensities and intervention scenarios, malariasimple closely reproduces key outputs of malariasimulation while reducing runtimes by up to 99.6%. Its computational efficiency enables full Bayesian parameter inference, allowing estimation of complete posterior distributions. malariasimple provides a fast, flexible, and mechanistically consistent addition to the Imperial College London Malaria Model framework, bridging the gap between computational efficiency and epidemiological realism. The malariasimple R package is freely available for download at https://github.com/mrc-ide/malariasimple.