Assessing the potential of freely available Earth Observation (EO) data as malaria risk indicators in sub-Saharan Africa

Suggested/supervised by: Linda Menk

Background:

Despite huge achievements in the prevention and control of malaria, still more than 200 million humans globally fall ill with it every year. About 95% of the cases and related deaths happen in sub-Saharan Africa. The population group at highest risk are children under the age of 5.

Malaria is transmitted by certain mosquito species which are dependent on certain habitat preconditions. For example, Vegetation health (VH) was found to be a good indicator of annual mosquito activity and related spikes in malaria outbreaks.

Source: Malaria Atlas Project (https://malariaatlas.org/)

The European flagship programme on Earth Observation Copernicus offers a growing variety of global datasets which are derived from satellite imagery, such as the Vegetation Condition Index and the Vegetation Productivity Index. The departure point for this master thesis could be the exploration of the global datasets offered by Copernicus (and others) and their potential to function as malaria risk indicators. After exploring which datasets could be put to use and why, the data should be retrieved, integrated and visualized for a specific region of interest in Africa. The master thesis will be part of a malaria case study which is currently conducted together with Doctors without borders/Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), as part of the Christian Doppler Laboratory “GEOHUM”. The results will help MSF to focus their malaria prevention activities to areas which face the highest risk.

Further reading: 

• https://land.copernicus.eu/global/themes/vegetation
• https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46020-4_6
• https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2020/