REMOTE SENSING AND GIS FOR DENGUE EPIDEMIC RISK MAPPING IN LAHORE, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Over the last two decades, dengue fever has become a major mosquito borne diseasein Pakistan. Dengue outbreaks were reported in the major cities of Pakistan especially in Lahore wherethe number of dengue cases increased radically in 2011 making it the worst epidemic in the nationalhistory. It had been observed that dengue virus population increases in specific climatic conditions andthere were some Environmental Factors EFs that promoted its growth. The objective of this study wasto propose an advance approach to identify the risk prone areas by linking these factors with dengueoutbreaks using satellite data and Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques. Informationprovided in terms of spatial and temporal distribution patterns of dengue fever outbreaks in Lahore andits relationships with EFs was helpful in developing dengue risk map. The results showed that most ofthe cases occurred in those areas which received heavy rainfall R2 ranging from 0.66 to 0.8 followed by high temperature and low Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).