Satellite Imaging and Surveillance of Infectious Diseases

Rajeev Singh,Koushlesh Ranjan

doi:10.4172/2329-891x.1000s1-004

Abstract

The Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and satellite image data can provide useful information for detection and management of both human and animal diseases outbreaks. The satellite surveillance can be used for monitoring of several environmental variables such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed and direction etc that influences the activity of pathogens, vectors and their interactions with human and animal hosts. By statistical analysis of satellite surveillance data the models based on geographic and vegetation of a particular landscape providing conducive environment to pathogens, spatial and temporal factors determining the distribution of disease can be framed. The GIS data analysis may help in several aspects during outbreak such as identification and spread of diseases over time, population groups at risk, patterns of disease outbreaks, facility available to healthcare and program intervention planning and assessment in disease outbreak. The satellite surveillance have been used in study of several water and vector borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid, leptospirosis, Rift Valley Fever, Foot and mouth disease, bluetongue, West Nile Virus disease, Japanese encephalitis etc. The remote sensing and GIS data analysis is proved as powerful tools for disease surveillance, predicting its outbreaks, and monitoring control programs.

Highlights

The sufficient amount of knowledge has accumulated over the past decades on relationship of the environment and disease, but present time demands the identification of the most robust environmental correlates of animal disease and accurately linking it with remote sensing technology in order to develop early and effective disease warning system
The results revealed that rice fields with high leaf area index (LAI) and near to animal pastures produced more numbers of mosquitoes, compared to fields with low LAI and far from the pastures
The multiple environmental predictors viz. land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) data derived from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) to was used to develop predictive model of West Nile virus transmission risk in humans of northern great plains of United State, which is considered as hotspot of human disease and found that environmental monitoring using remote sensed data have a good space in surveillance of West Nile virus risk prediction in space and time [10]

Summary

Introduction

The sufficient amount of knowledge has accumulated over the past decades on relationship of the environment and disease, but present time demands the identification of the most robust environmental correlates of animal disease and accurately linking it with remote sensing technology in order to develop early and effective disease warning system. The satellite imaging was used to develop risk maps and control of few water and vector borne diseases. There is a long history of developing effective models for prediction and assessment of mosquitoes borne diseases based on environmental indicators and few are given as under.

Results

Conclusion