In this clip you will see four years
covered in 100 seconds of data interplay, where over half a million of
reported cases of Rift Valley Fever affected humans and livestock.
This data visualization gives you the peek into
the scientific research efforts of Dr. Assaf Anyamba, who for over 20
years has been tracking diseases from space by combining
hundreds of datasets from satellites and weather satellites
with disease reports and mosquito samples. This is what big
science is all about: big data all around from the ground and from space
And science has proven that there’s a cause-and-effect pattern
between climate events and infectious disease outbreaks.
The climate patterns of El Niño and La Niña as measured in the Pacific Ocean
near the Equator create weather anomalies
whose ripple effects are felt with a two- to three-month delay in distant regions such as
southern Africa. For example, the mild
2009 to 2010 El Niño caused an above normal
increase in rainfall and vegetation, which in turn, triggered
a large outbreak of mosquito-borne Rift Valley Fever.
We created this data visualization with Dr. Assaf Anyamba
to showcase complex data associations and allow the viewers to track the
key indicators over a period of time. In a sense,
this visualization allows you, the viewer, to see
with Dr. Anyamba’s eyes and be guided to the conclusions by the data.