A Clustering Technique Based on the Hard K-Means (H.KM.) Method to Determine the Governorate That Have More Influence for Spreading COVID-19 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the gathering place of most of the nationalities of the Islamic world. When a certain disease spreads, it will be important to know which governorate has the greatest influence on the spread of the disease and take the necessary precautions to limit its spread, and this is the goal of this study. COVID-19, The SRS-COV-2 coronavirus that caused the most recent pandemic is known as the Corona pandemic. To determine which Saudi governorates had the greatest influence on the epidemics spread, data was gathered for thirteen governorates over two months (July and August). The data was analyzed by using cluster analysis. The Saudi governorates were divided into cluster (groups) and cluster centers, these centers represent the main characteristics of each cluster (group) by using the Hard K-Means (H.KM.) clustering technique, and the optimal number of clusters (groups) was calculated by applying the validity clustering methods to identify the group that has the greatest influence on the epidemic's propagation. We employ variance analysis (ANOVA table) to determine the governorate that has the greatest influence on the spread of the disease by knowing the variances within each cluster (group) and between clusters. The goal of ANOVA is to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between the governorates (clusters) in terms of the spread of the disease. The conclusion of the study suggests that the governorates of ( Riyad, Maka and Eastern) have had the most impact on the COVID-19 pandemic spread.