Ecological Niche Modeling Identifies Fine-Scale Areas at High Risk of Dengue Fever in the Pearl River Delta, China

Qiaoxuan Li, Hongyan Ren, Lan Zheng, Wei Cao, An Zhang, Dafang Zhuang, Liang Lu and Huixian Jiang
Additional contact information
Qiaoxuan Li: College of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, No. 8 Shangsan Road, Fuzhou 350007, China
Hongyan Ren: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
Lan Zheng: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
Wei Cao: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
An Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
Dafang Zhuang: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China
Liang Lu: State Key Laboratory for Infectious Diseases Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, China CDC, No.5 Changbai Road, Changping District, Beijing 102206, China
Huixian Jiang: College of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, No. 8 Shangsan Road, Fuzhou 350007, China

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: Dengue fever (DF) is one of the most common and rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral diseases in tropical and subtropical regions. In recent years, this imported disease has posed a serious threat to public health in China, especially in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Although the severity of DF outbreaks in the PRD is generally associated with known risk factors, fine scale assessments of areas at high risk for DF outbreaks are limited. We built five ecological niche models to identify such areas including a variety of climatic, environmental, and socioeconomic variables, as well as, in some models, extracted principal components. All the models we tested accurately identified the risk of DF, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were greater than 0.8, but the model using all original variables was the most accurate (AUC = 0.906). Socioeconomic variables had a greater impact on this model (total contribution 55.27%) than climatic and environmental variables (total contribution 44.93%). We found the highest risk of DF outbreaks on the border of Guangzhou and Foshan (in the central PRD), and in northern Zhongshan (in the southern PRD). Our fine-scale results may help health agencies to focus epidemic monitoring tightly on the areas at highest risk of DF outbreaks.

Keywords: dengue fever; Maxent; socioeconomic factors; environmental conditions; Guangzhou; Foshan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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