The Influence of Spatial Configuration of Residential Area and Vector Populations on Dengue Incidence Patterns in an Individual-Level Transmission Model
Authored by Jeon-Young Kang, Jared Aldstadt
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph14070792
Sponsors:
United States National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
ODD
Flow charts
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Dengue is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that is endemic in
tropical and subtropical countries. Many individual-level simulation
models have been developed to test hypotheses about dengue virus
transmission. Often these efforts assume that human host and mosquito
vector populations are randomly or uniformly distributed in the
environment. Although, the movement of mosquitoes is affected by spatial
configuration of buildings and mosquito populations are highly clustered
in key buildings, little research has focused on the influence of the
local built environment in dengue transmission models. We developed an
agent-based model of dengue transmission in a village setting to test
the importance of using realistic environments in individual-level
models of dengue transmission. The results from one-way ANOVA analysis
of simulations indicated that the differences between scenarios in terms
of infection rates as well as serotype-specific dominance are
statistically significant. Specifically, the infection rates in
scenarios of a realistic environment are more variable than those of a
synthetic spatial configuration. With respect to dengue
serotype-specific cases, we found that a single dengue serotype is more
often dominant in realistic environments than in synthetic environments.
An agent-based approach allows a fine-scaled analysis of simulated
dengue incidence patterns. The results provide a better understanding of
the influence of spatial heterogeneity on dengue transmission at a local
scale.
Tags
Agent-based model
Thailand
disease
Culicidae
Virus
Survival
Risk-factors
Puerto-rico
Village
Aedes-aegypti diptera
Dengue
Spatial configuration
Mosquito population
Serotype dominance
Ecuador