Abstract
BackgroundThis work studies the spatiotemporal evolution of bubonic plague in India during 1896–1906 using stochastic concepts and geographical information science techniques. In the past, most investigations focused on selected cities to conduct different kinds of studies, such as the ecology of rats. No detailed maps existed incorporating the space-time dependence structure and uncertainty sources of the epidemic system and providing a composite space-time picture of the disease propagation characteristics.ResultsInformative spatiotemporal maps were generated that represented mortality rates and geographical spread of the disease, and epidemic indicator plots were derived that offered meaningful characterizations of the spatiotemporal disease distribution. The bubonic plague in India exhibited strong seasonal and geographical features. During its entire duration, the plague continued to invade new geographical areas, while it followed a re-emergence pattern at many localities; its rate changed significantly during each year and the mortality distribution exhibited space-time heterogeneous patterns; prevalence usually occurred in the autumn and spring, whereas the plague stopped moving towards new locations during the summers.ConclusionModern stochastic modelling and geographical information science provide powerful means to study the spatiotemporal distribution of the bubonic plague epidemic under conditions of uncertainty and multi-sourced databases; to account for various forms of interdisciplinary knowledge; and to generate informative space-time maps of mortality rates and propagation patterns. To the best of our knowledge, this kind of plague maps and plots become available for the first time, thus providing novel perspectives concerning the distribution and space-time propagation of the deadly epidemic. Furthermore, systematic maps and indicator plots make possible the comparison of the spatial-temporal propagation patterns of different diseases.
Highlights
This work studies the spatiotemporal evolution of bubonic plague in India during 1896–1906 using stochastic concepts and geographical information science techniques
The generated bubonic plague maps describe the varying mortality spread throughout India and during different time periods
On the basis of these maps, several observations are made below concerning the space-time distribution and propagation of the bubonic plague epidemic throughout India
Summary
This work studies the spatiotemporal evolution of bubonic plague in India during 1896–1906 using stochastic concepts and geographical information science techniques. When the plague reached Hong Kong and Canton in 1894, western authorities decided to intervene to avoid a worldwide epidemic [3]. They were only partly successful, as the epidemic spread primarily in India with serious consequences [4,5]. It took more than 10 years to conclude that the bubonic plague was a disease transmit-. The various uncertainty sources characterizing the propagation of the epidemic must be adequately accounted by the space-time methodology
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