ABSTRACT
Satellite remote sensing produces an abundance of environmental data that can be used in the study of human health. To support the development of early warning systems for mosquito-borne diseases, we developed an open-source, client based software application to enable the Epidemiological Applications of Spatial Technologies (EASTWeb). Two major design decisions were full automation of the discovery, retrieval and processing of remote sensing data from multiple sources, and making the system easily modifiable in response to changes in data availability and user needs. Key innovations that helped to achieve these goals were the implementation of a software framework for data downloading and the design of a scheduler that tracks the complex dependencies among multiple data processing tasks and makes the system resilient to external errors. EASTWeb has been successfully applied to support forecasting of West Nile virus outbreaks in the United States and malaria epidemics in the Ethiopian highlands.
ABSTRACT
The national resurgence of human West Nile virus (WNV) disease in 2012 raised questions about the factors responsible for WNV outbreaks. Interannual climatic variations may influence WNV amplification and transmission to humans through multiple pathways, including mosquito breeding habitats, gonotrophic cycles, extrinsic incubation, avian communities, and human behavior. We examined the influences of temperature and precipitation anomalies on interannual variation in human WNV cases in three regions of the United States. There were consistent positive influences of winter temperatures, weaker and more variable positive effects of spring and summer temperatures, and highly variable precipitation effects that ranged from positive to negative. The overwintering period may be a particularly important climatic constraint on the dynamics of WNV in cold-temperate regions of North America. Geographic differences in the seasonal timing and relative importance of climatic drivers of WNV risk likely reflect underlying variability in key ecological and social characteristics.
