ORIGINAL PAPER The importance of climatic factors and outliers in predicting

strong seasonal component and regional variations in temper-ate climate zones. Forecasting the risk of infection regionally may provide clues to identify sources of transmission affected by temperature and precipitation. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess temporal patterns and differences in campylobacteriosis risk among nine climatic divisions of Georgia, USA, (2) compare univariate forecasting models that analyze campylobacteriosis risk over time with those that incorporate temperature and/or precipitation, and (3) investi-gate alternatives to supposedly random walk series and non-random occurrences that could be outliers. Temporal patterns of campylobacteriosis risk in Georgia were visually and sta-tistically assessed. Univariate and multivariable forecasting models were used to predict the risk of campylobacteriosis and the coefficient of determination (R2) was used for evalu