Vector-borne disease risk

Vector-borne disease risk mapping uses Earth observation to monitor environmental conditions that make vectors more likely to breed, survive, or transmit pathogens.^[1][2]

Satellites do not observe malaria, dengue, or mosquitoes directly at operational scale. They observe predictors: temperature, rainfall and wetness, vegetation, standing-water habitat, humidity proxies, land cover, and population exposure context.^[3][4]

These layers feed surveillance and early-warning systems. VectorSurv, for example, combines surveillance data with environmental surfaces to support mosquito-control and public-health decisions, while Malaria Atlas Project publishes geospatial malaria risk and covariate datasets.^[5][6]

The topic is therefore a modelling topic, not a detection topic. EO layers indicate where conditions are suitable; health ministries still need case reporting, entomological sampling, intervention records, and local epidemiology to confirm risk.^[1]