NASA to Predict Malaria Outbreaks

Scientists Are Using NASA Satellites to Predict Malaria Outbreaks

Data from those satellites could save thousands of lives.

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By Avery Thompson

Malaria is one of the world's most deadly diseases, made even more deadly by the fact that it tends to affect mostly remote communities. This makes it difficult to track and control malaria outbreaks when they happen, resulting in more severe outbreaks and more victims. To solve this problem, a group of researchers have turned to an unlikely source: NASA satellites.

One of the most malaria-prone regions is Peru, which over the past few years has been seeing an increase in malaria infections in its part of the Amazon rainforest. The Peruvian government tracks malaria outbreaks at a series of health posts across the country. When someone gets malaria, they visit a health post and get recorded.

But many people in the country are seasonal laborers like miners and loggers, which means the health post they visit might be hundreds of miles away from where they were infected. This makes it next to impossible to pin down where a malaria outbreak originated.

To solve this problem, a group of researchers is using data from NASA satellites, which might at first seem strange.After all, it's not like we can observe the mosquitoes from space. But it turns out we can do the next best thing: NASA satellites can be used to track weather patterns, temperatures, and water levels in order to find the ponds and puddles where those mosquitoes breed.

The researchers used NASA weather satellites, combined with a computer model called the Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS), in order to track and predict temperatures, rainfall levels, soil moisture content, and vegetation. This information can tell the researchers where most of the mosquitoes are going to be.

"It's an exercise in indirect reasoning," says investigator Ben Zaitchik. "These models let us predict where the soil moisture is going to be in a condition that will allow for breeding sites to form."

But mosquitoes are only half the equation. The researchers also need to know where the people are going to be, and for this they rely on a combination of census data and seasonal migration studies, informed by the same NASA data used to track mosquitoes.

"It's much easier to float logs down a river when its high, and at the same time mosquitos thrive because pockets of water emerge along the riverbank," says principal investigator William Pan.

The researchers look at the places where lots of mosquitoes will meet lots of people, and identify those areas as the likely sites of future outbreaks. Their system can predict malaria outbreaks 12 weeks in advance, and provide doctors accurate maps of where and when people will be infected. With any luck, that information could save a lot of lives.

Source: NASA