Remote sensing and epidemiology: examples of applications for two vector-borne diseases

Remote sensing techniques have greatly contributed to improve our capacity to observe our environment and its processes. For about 15 years, the use of satellite images for epidemiological purposes has been largely promoted to determine diseases distributions and their variations through time. In some circumstances, when diseases are strongly related to environmental data such as climate, vegetation or land-use, radiation values can be included in prediction models. In other cases, remote sensing data provide information for drawing thematic layers involved in the epidemiological processes, which may differ according to the different ecotypes and ecosystems. According to its final goal, the users can choose from the panel of available radiometers with specific characteristics including spatial resolution and frequency of data. In this paper, two examples of major vector-borne diseases, namely Animal Trypanosomosis and Bluetongue, illustrate these applications. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.