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Mapping malaria severity zones with Nigeriasat-1 incorporated into geographical information system

11 September 2012, AfriCAN Climate
URL: http://www.africanclimate.net/en/publications/mapping-malaria-severity-zones-nigeriasat-1-incorporated-geographical-information

It has been derive environmental factors that are likely to influence malarial distribution from Nigeriasat-1 in a geographical information systems (GIS) environment and relate it to the empirical evidence of reported malarial cases in the hospitals using discriminant analysis (DA) to characterize, identify and map malarial risk zones.

Drainage density and human settlement (urban/rural) habitats were identified as most important. Drainage density proved to be a highly significant predictor because of its association with swamps; thus, the distance and the area of the swamp represent the most suitable habitat for the mosquito’s life cycle. In this study, by using DA, Nigeriasat-1 and GIS it is possible to classify accurately the low malaria risk zone (100%), medium and high risk zone (83.33%), with an overall accuracy of 88.9% being achieved for the study area. The DA revealed that drainage density (water bodies) is the dominant factor controlling the rates of malaria occurrence. The remotely sensed environmental variables could be combined with other variables to aid decision support for identifying the nature and magnitude of intervention efforts that may be needed from the malarial risk map derived in this study.