310 - Designing a Global Surveillance and Forecasting System for Selected Vector-borne Diseases

Vector-borne disease emergence and spread have the potential to result in outbreaks and epidemics across the world threatening global health security and US national security. Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more than 700,000 deaths annually. They can be caused by either parasites, bacteria or viruses. The incidence of vector-borne diseases is increasing everywhere globally due to a highly variable and changing climate. Illustrations include the emergence of chikungunya and Zika viruses in the western hemisphere in 2013 and 2015 and chikungunya in Mediterranean Europe since 2006. The epidemiology of many vector-borne pathogens is driven by climate and environmental conditions that critically influence vector survival, reproduction, biting rates, feeding patterns, pathogen incubation and replication periods, and the efficiency of pathogen transmission among multiple hosts. While specific shifts in patterns of climate and weather anomalies are known to precede certain vector-borne disease outbreaks (e.g. dengue, chikungunya, Rift Valley fever, Zika, hantavirus), there has not been a comprehensive estimation of driving environmental and climatic thresholds, temporal persistence of the anomalies, as well as generalization of these metrics at a global scale. We are utilizing various global satellite remote sensing and climate data sets, in combination with disease outbreak data sets, to use machine learning techniques to globally map current and forecast the risk of selected vector-borne disease activity.