Classifying ecoregions in North Africa to optimize entomological surveillance programs for disease vectors.
(Cover picture: NASA 2002)
On behalf of the World Organization for Animal Health in the project “Defining Ecoregions and Prototyping an EO-based Vector-borne Disease Surveillance System for North Africa (PROVNA)”, the Italian Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale of Abruzzo and Molise “G. Caporale” (IZS-Teramo) has classified ecoregions in North Africa. With a risk analysis that takes into account similar environmental and climatic conditions, entomological surveillance programmes for disease vectors could be adapted and optimised.
To determine these environmental and climatic conditions, time series of remote sensing data were created for the years 2018 to 2022. Specifically, soil temperature for day and night, a normalised differentiated vegetation index (NDVI), soil moisture, a normalised differentiated water index (NDWI) and precipitation quantities were recorded and harmonised to a spatial resolution of 250 metres and a temporal resolution of 16 days.
The specific task of mundialis was to process and harmonise the various data sets.
The company mundialis has fully implemented the project. The following steps were carried out:
Classifying an area into similar areas (ecoregions) based on specific environmental and climatic factors (e.g. altitude, vegetation, precipitation, temperature) can provide useful information for optimizing disease spread surveillance systems. To this end, ecoregions in North Africa were identified as part of this project.
