Effectiveness of NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index) in Modelling Aedes aegypti house index.

ESTALLO EL; LUDUEÑA-ALMEIDA F; VISINTIN A; SCAVUZZO CM; LAMFRI M; INTROINI MV; ZAIDENBERG M; ALMIRÓN WR

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REMOTE SENSING

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Año: 2012 vol. 33 p. 4254 - 4265

0143-1161

Abstract The application of remotely sensed data to public health has increasedin Argentina in the last years, especially to study vector-borne viral diseases as dengue. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) has been widely used for remote sensing of vegetation for many years as well as the brightness temperature. Another environmental variable obtained from satellites is the normalized difference water index (NDWI) for remote sensing of the vegetation liquid water status from space. The aim of the present paper was to test the effectiveness of  NDWI together with other satellite and meteorological data, to develop two forecasting models, namely, the SATMET (satellite and meteorological variables) model, and the SAT (satellite environmental variables) model. The models were developed and validated by dividing the data file into two sets: the data between January 2001 and April 2004 was used to construct the models, data from between May 2004 and May 2005 was used to validate them. The regression analysis for the SATMET and SAT models showed an adjusted R2 of 0.82 and 0.79, respectively. To validate the model, a correlation between the estimates and the observations was obtained for both the SATMET model (r = 0.57) and the SAT model (r = 0.64). Both models showed the same root mean square error (RMSE= 0.04), and therefore the same forecasting power. For that reason, these models may have applications as decision supportive tools in assisting public health authorities in Ae. aegypti control and risk management planning programs.