Predicting Malaria Outbreaks With NASA Satellites
- Scientific consulting by:
- Ben Zaitchik and
- William Pan
- View full credits
Containing malaria outbreaks is challenging because it is difficult to figure out where people are contracting the disease. As a result, resources such as insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor sprays are often deployed to areas where few people are getting infected, allowing the outbreak to grow.
To tackle this problem, university researchers have turned to data from NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites, which are able to track the types of human and environmental events that typically precede an outbreak. With funding from NASA’s Applied Sciences Program, they are working in partnership with the Peruvian government to develop a system that uses satellite and other data to help forecast outbreaks at the household level months in advance and prevent outbreaks.
Additional imagery from:
Christopher B. Plunkett Fort
James Gathany
Fábio Medeiros da Costa
Complete transcript available.
Music credits: ‘Inner Confusion’ by Laurent Levesque [SACEM], ‘The Awakening’ by Benjamin Krause [GEMA], Scott Goodman [ASCAP], ‘Cellular Signals’ by Laurent Levesque [SACEM]
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
For More Information
See https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/using-nasa-satellite-data-to-predict-malaria-outbreaks
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Data visualizer
- Cheng Zhang (USRA)
Writer
- Samson K. Reiny (Wyle Information Systems)
Scientists
- Ben Zaitchik (Johns Hopkins University) [Lead]
- William Pan (None) [Lead]
Producer
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle)
Support
- Dalia B Kirschbaum (NASA/GSFC)
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (KBRwyle)