Zoonoses and infectious disease transmission are determined by complex interactions between human and animal populations, pathogens, and the environment. Earth observation systems provide essential information on environmental factors and the opportunity to explore relationships between localised disease transmission estimates – as measured for instance by the force of infection – and the underlying climate and environment. In this joint talk given by Ilaria Dorigatti, Andrew Glover and Victoria Cox, we will present recent work investigating the role of climate and the environment on the spatiotemporal dynamics of dengue, Zika and Chikungunya in Brazil and Colombia, West Nile Virus in Italy and SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. Using a data-driven approach and Bayesian inferential methods, we fit regression-based and mechanistic models of disease transmission to epidemiological data, to characterise environmental drivers and identify empirical relationships between mosquito bionomics, temperature and rainfall.

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