Modeling Japanese Encephalitis in US using Interconnected Networks
Japanese encephalitis (JE) is an infectious disease that is caused by a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Domestic and feral pigs, some species of birds, and humans are all involved in the transmission cycle of this very serious zoonosis. JE is endemic in some areas of Asia, where the major vector identified is Culex tritaeniorhynchus. Even though this specific mosquito is not present in US, all vectors competent for West Nile virus are potentially competent for JEV too, posing a serious threat for the US. Modeling JE presents major challenges, as all vector-borne zoonoses. Due to the complexities of multiple populations involved, the direct use of a network approach will lead to a large set of equations with many parameters to be estimated. To overcome this problem, we are exploring novel modeling approaches based on interconnected networks. The objective of this proposal is to define and parameterize scalable models for JE, based on multiple networks, describing domestic and feral swine, mosquito, human, and bird populations in selected areas of the United States.
Duration September 5 2014 - August 31 2018
Investigators
Caterina Scoglio (Google Profile)
Lee Cohnstaedt
Faryad Darabi Sahneh (Google Profile)
Products
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Supported by the United States Department of Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
