Rift Valley fever (RVF) epidemics in East Africa follow unusually heavy rains, which flood mosquito breeding sites. The RVF Early Warning Platform is a VBDModNet research project that turns daily satellite weather into an early signal of unusual mosquito seasons.
The platform combines CHIRPS satellite rainfall and NASA POWER temperature, a weather-driven model of floodwater Aedes and Culex mosquitoes built on Mweya et al. (2014, PLoS ONE 9: e108430), and anomaly detectors that learn each site’s normal seasons. It is being developed for a planned pilot in Ngorongoro District, Tanzania, subject to agreements with authorities and ethics approval.
The platform is a research tool. It has been tested on simulated data and historical weather only and is not yet validated in the field. Its software is open source (GPL-3.0) on Zenodo, and papers describing it are under peer review.
Visit the platform: https://rvf.vbdmodelling.org
Interested in collaboration, pilot sites or student projects? Contact Dr Clement N. Mweya at mweya.clement@udsm.ac.tz.