Fuzzy Multidimensional Model to Cluster Dengue Risk in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Dengue is the world's rapidly transmitting mosquito-borne viral disease. It is mostly found in subtropical countries in the world. The annual number of global deaths caused by dengue fever is about 25,000. The Sri Lanka dengue situation is also not different to other countries. In the year 2019, dengue fever caused 120 deaths in Sri Lanka. Most of these deaths were reported from the main administrative district Colombo. Health authorities have to pay their attention to control this new situation. Therefore, identifying the hot spots in the country and implementing necessary actions to control the disease is an important task. This study aims to develop a clustering technique to identify the dengue hot spots in Sri Lanka. Suitable risk factors are identified using expert ideas and reviewing available literature. The weights are derived using Chang's extent method. These weights are used to prioritize the factors associated with dengue. Using the geometric mean, the interaction between the triggering variable and other variables is calculated. According to the interaction matrices, five dengue risk clusters are identified. It is found that high population movement in the area plays a dominant role to transmit the disease to other areas. Most of the districts in Sri Lanka will reach to moderate risk cluster in the year 2022.