GIS FRAMEWORK FOR PLAGUE RISK ASSESSMENT

摘要

Plague, caused by Yersinia pestis, is a rapidly progressing, highly infectious, and highly feared disease that is likely to be fatal without prompt antibiotic treatment. Human plague cases are relatively low incidence but high mortality. Geographic information system (GIS) is ideal to optimize risk assessment and surveillance program. The paper will present the conceptual scheme for plague risk assessment considering plague occurrence probability and potential exposure factors. The assessment commonly has three steps: a. Generation of risk factors, using a common geographical unit. b. Conversion of risk factors to a common risk scale. c. Development of criteria to integrate risk factors. Then GIS was used to pre-processing and integrate multi-source remote sensing data and administrative map and the ecological niche modeling. Wetland and land cover were calculated as mask to remove absolutely unsuitable area. Outbreak and density showed the existing and outbreak of bacteria. The vulnerability part considered human activities which could contact with the geographic extent of host animal, including population density, farming, mining, travel, etc.. In the data integration and validation part, the input variables needed to be standardized into the same zero-one range; then, they were weighed and combined by multi-criteria evaluation. The assessment was based on surveillance reports generated by the regional CDC. The risk assessment system proposed in this paper could emphasize the grading plague risk spatially in plague nature foci. The maps could help public health authorities decide where to perform plague surveillance and take preventive measures.