A thermodynamic paradigm for using satellite based geophysical measurements in public health applications

Abstract

A thermodynamic paradigm for studying disease vector’s habitats & life cycles using NASA’s remote sensing data is being proposed. NASA’s current and planned satellite missions provide measurements of the critical environmental measures environmental state functions important to vector & disease life cycles such as precipitation, soil moisture, temperature, vapor pressure deficits, wet/dry edges, and solar radiation. Satellite data provide landscape scale process functions represented by land use/cover mapping and actual measurements of ecological functions/structure: canopy cover, species, phenology, and aquatic plant coverage. These measurements are taken in a spatial context and provide a time series of data to track changes in time. Global public health is entering a new informational age through the use of spatial models of disease vector/host ecologies driven by the use of remotely sensed data to measure environmental and structural factors critical in determining disease vector habitats, distributions, life cycles, and host interactions. The vector habitat microclimates can be quantified in terms of the surface energy budget measured by satellites. The epidemiological equations (processes) can be adapted and modified to explicitly incorporate environmental factors and interfaces required by a specific disease and its vector/host cycle. Remote sensing can be used to measure or evaluate or estimate both environment (state functions) and interface (process functions). It is critical that the products of remote sensing must be expressed in a way they can be integrated directly into the epidemiological equations.