Ecological Niche Modeling Course - Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 17-19 May 2016.

1. Mapping Disease Transmission Risk
from Biogeographic and Ecological
Perspectives
A. Townsend Peterson
University of Kansas

2. Why Maps for Diseases?
• Where to focus resources for vaccination?
• Where to focus educational efforts?
• Where to place diagnostic facilities and
equipment?
• In short, where to expect a disease to occur,
and where not????

4. Published January 2004

5. • Marburg disease
distribution
• Spotty, patchy
potential distribution
across eastern and
southern Africa
• Distinct ecological
distribution from
ebola (open circles)
• Potential distribution
extends to Cameroon
and northern Angola

6. • Marburg disease
distribution
• Spotty, patchy
potential distribution
across eastern and
southern Africa
• Distinct ecological
distribution from
ebola (open circles)
• Potential distribution
extends to Cameroon
and northern Angola

9. Update to 2015:
• Approximate doubling in information
over 2004 efforts
• Species by species model
development
• Explicit consideration of uncertainty
in model predictions
• In review for publication

11. THE CURRENT DISEASE TOOLKIT

12. Dots on Maps

18. ?
?
?
?
?

22. The Situation …
• Spatial-only models do nothing to establish a
connection between occurrence and context
• No good way to anticipate disease
transmission risk responses to future climates
• Lots of talk, lots of discussion, not much data
• Some adaptations of transmission models to
the question, but not terribly spatially explicit
• These gaps left open many questions…

23. Geography
Disease
Incidence

24. Geography
Disease
Incidence
Spatial Modeling

25. Geography
Disease
Incidence
Environmental
Conditions

26. Geography
Disease
Incidence
Environmental
Conditions
Space-and-
environment Models

27. Geography
Disease
Incidence
Environmental
Conditions
Interactions
among species
Pathogens
Vectors
Hosts

29. Workflow
• Understand disease system in detail
• Identify suite of species relevant to the disease
(vectors, hosts, pathogen)
• Develop hypotheses of relevant regions (M) for each
species
• Fit ecological niche models individually for each
species
• Model or simulate interactions between the species
to create transmission system
• Model or simulate human presence and behavior to
create risk map
• Transfer present model to future (post climate-
change) environmental (and human) scenarios

34. Lutzomyia longipalpis

43. ResearchedRaw

46. Lassa: Uncareful Results

50. Effects of Quality Control

51. Effects of Reducing Oversampling

52. Effects of Error Balance

54. New Approaches, Gaps, and Impediments
• Mapping and modeling approaches based in ecology
and biogeography have much to offer to spatial
epidemiology
– Working to create a truly predictive methodology that
can anticipate disease occurrence
• Methods
– Need to assure that the methodology used is consistent
with the processes that are occurring
– Ecology, biogeography, etc.
• Data, data, and more data…
– Occurrence data for species
– Relevant geospatial data
– Archival storage of existing samples to allow data
recycling

55. CONSTRAINTS AND LIMITATIONS

57. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

58. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

59. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

60. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

61. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

62. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

63. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

64. Examples of Disease-relevant Data

65. town@ku.edu