Developing a Framework for Modeling and Simulating Aedes

aegypti and Dengue Fever Dynamics

Tiago Lima (UFOP), Tiago Carneiro (UFOP), Raquel Lana (Fiocruz), Cláudia Codeço (Fiocruz), Raian Maretto (INPE), Liliam Medeiros (UNESP), Leandro Silva (UFOP), Leonardo Santos (INPE), Isabel Reis (Fiocruz), Flávio Coelho

(FGV), Antonio Miguel Monteiro (INPE)

Controlling dengue fever and its vector is a public health challenge

Disease presents a complex temporal-spatial dynamic

- Meteorological variables interfere in developmental stages of the vector

- Social and demographic aspects could help to increase dengue incidence

- unplanned urbanization

- precariousness of garbage collection and water supply

Introduction

Several models have being developed aiming to

- understand the dynamics of vetor population and disease transmission

- predict epidemic outbreaks

- analyze and evaluate the impact of control strategies

- but they are not easily applicable to other contexts and studies

There are some generic frameworks focusing on diseases spread on global scale

we need solutions with focus on dengue and targeting local dynamics at intra-urban scales

Introduction

A tool for helping the designing of site-specific and population-specific control strategies for dengue

To reach this goal, a framework should provide- integration with GIS- a collection of built in models- a modeling language that supports both population models and individual-based models- a friendly GUI for easy building and configuration- a flexible and extensible architecture to allow contribution from users

DengueME (Dengue Modeling Environment) frameworkan open source tool aiming to support modeling and simulation of spatio-temporal dynamics of Dengue fever and its vector

Objectives

Framework should provides services to support the development of models and evaluation of intervention scenarios applied to real case studies

support communication with geographical databases

enable development of multi-scale models and use of different paradigms

offer a common and easy to use language for model implementation

offer a basic library of built-in models which can be customized and combined to generate specific models

provide a friendly graphical user interface for creating, configuring and running built-in and user defined models

extensible - enable adding of new models to its library

DengueME Framework: requirements and design

DengueME Framework: architecture

TerraME - a software platform for environmental modeling and simulation

DengueME architecture: TerraME

Dynamics of dengue is governed by a complex interaction between humans, mosquitoes, viruses, on a heterogeneous landscape

Vector Modelspopulation dynamics of Aedes aegypti with differential equations modeling variation stock at each life stage under the influence of environmental carrying capacity and the climate

Host Modelsdemographic dynamic of the human population in the study areadifferential equations describing the stock of individuals or individual-based model

Transmission ModelsVirus transmission process depends on the amount of susceptible and infected (people or mosquitoes)

DengueME architecture: Models

Mobility ModelsDescribes the mobility and commutation of humans and vectors

spread of viruses and vectors is facilitated by the flow of individuals

from a no mobility or random mobility to a complex model based on real data

Landscape Class ModelsUrban landscape interferes in the dynamics of dengue transmission as it introduces

heterogeneity in the availability of breeding sites for Aedes aegypti

landscape component provides a landscape classification model to describes the space

from a homogeneous space to sophisticated techniques for segmentation and classification

DengueME architecture: Models

Potential end-users of DengueME are not experts in programming techiniques

reduce barriers related to using programming languages and facilitate the framework utilization

DengueME Visual Development Environment

provide services to help users to perform the required steps for developing models and defining scenarios

allows to configure built-in or imported models

helps to create scenarios through the selection and combination of sub-models and their parameterization

DengueME architecture: VDE

DengueME architecture: VDE

DengueME architecture: VDE

The work is under development

- design and implementation of framework

- build-in models- three vector models implemented and applied to

a case study

- a host and transmission models implemented and applied to a case study

- visual development environment

Results

Using DengueME to evaluate the impact of local interventions on dengue vector density

Results

Using DengueME to study epidemic scenarios

Results

Results

Results

Despite the success of mathematical models in explaining Aedes aegypti spatial dynamics and dengue transmission, there is still a need to stimulate their use to assist the planning of dengue control interventions

model reuse is still a challenge

models and tools can not require experience in programming or great expertise in modeling development, database management and model-data integration it is required to understand the model assumptions to correctly use them

DengueME framework

services for modeling and simulation dynamics of dengue in urban environments

a library of built in models

a visual development environment that provides friendly graphical user interface

an open and extensible architecture

Final remarks

developing and incorporating new models into the framework

enable addition of new models

Future works

Model.lua

Config.xml

Questions? Suggestions?

Acknowledgments