We will use the CORINE land cover dataset provided by the European Environment Agency (Dataset Catalogue Code: RDA_ClimateChallenge_eeacorine_22) to generate appropriate data layers with information on land-types and hydrology in the European land-cover map. These characteristics are essential determinants for the distribution of mosquitos and will be made available as hierarchically structured raster layers in various resolutions. A workflow for ecological niche modelling (http://purl.ox.ac.uk/workflow/myexp-3355.20) will import these data into BioVeL’s modelling environment (http://portal.biovel.eu/), where it can be combined with other relevant datasets containing climate information such as temperature, precipitation, etc (Hijmans et al. 2005 Int J Climat 25: 1965-1978.), soil properties such as soil type, pH, etc (FAO, 2012 Harmonized World Soil Database), and biological information including species distribution, ecology, and taxonomy of the mosquito species (Andersson et al. personal data). The workflow will be used to generate predictive distribution models for a large number of disease-transmitting mosquito species from these different datasets across a wide range of algorithms and parameter settings. A fully documented pilot analysis will be published as a Research Object (www.researchobject.org) in the Zenodo online repository (https://zenodo.org).
We expect that researchers, authorities, and consultant companies will use our platform in the future to predict the abundance and outbreaks of invasive species as well as pathogens such as mosquito-borne diseases based on landscape features, climate, biology as well as socio-economic data (e.g. traffic, land use). This will substantially increase the efficiency of surveillance programs. Most importantly it will lower the costs of disease management programs, because outbreaks can be detected in their early phase.
Many tropical countries will be able to use the technology and know how developed here, i.e. especially countries where climate change starts to show dramatic effects on the distribution of mosquito borne-diseases. In this way the platform will contribute to sustainable disease management in Europe and on a global level.