CAGIS Seminar November 6 | Space-Time Modeling of Mosquito-borne Disease Outbreaks

We welcome Ph.D. Candidate Michael Desjardins to hear about his investigations into the time/space dynamics of dengue, chikungunya and Zika outbreaks in Cali, Colombia.

Abstract: Dengue, chikungunya, and Zika are mosquito-borne diseases that infect an estimated 390 million people worldwide each year, and 100,000 in Colombia alone. Despite the human costs, these diseases are particularly difficult to control as outbreaks vary dramatically in time and geography.

To understand the threat posed to residents in Colombia’s second largest city of Cali, Desjardins used weekly case data and space-time conditional autoregressive models to quantify risk associated socioeconomic, environmental, and accessibility factors.

Modeling revealed the existence of high-risk disease clusters within indicated neighborhoods, and generated a predictive understanding outbreak dynamics using lagged weather variables. Together, results helped health officials target at-risk neighborhoods for mosquito surveillance and control.