2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Earth Observation Approaches to Spatial Disease Prediction, Surveillance, and Control

Infectious Disease: Monitoring and Response Earth observation using satellite and earth surface monitoring data provides information on the natural and built environment, including climate and weather -- e.g., temperature, precipitation, humidity, and cloud cover -- land cover and land use, vegetation, soil, and elevation. The spatial and temporal dynamics of many diseases, particularly infectious diseases, are influenced by variability in the environment. If associations between environmental factors and disease patterns can be estimated, earth observation data can be used to predict the spatial and/or temporal distribution of disease. Earth observation data can thus be used for diverse health applications, such as supporting the development of static spatial predictions of disease risk, outbreak early warning systems, and forecasts of the health impact of climate change, including global warming. Such efforts require direct or indirect interdisciplinary cooperation between meteorologists, geoinformaticians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and health policy researchers and decision-makers, among others. In this symposium, examples of vector-borne and zoonotic infectious diseases are used to illustrate state-of-the-art application of earth observation data to disease surveillance and control. The focus is on integrated systems that have been operationalized in the context of real-world surveillance and control programs and thus emphasizes the impact that earth observation science is having on health.