Dengue Advanced Readiness Tools (DART) – integrated digital system for dengue outbreak prediction and monitoring

Dengue is the most rapidly expanding arboviral disease in the world. Epidemics of varying size occur yearly in endemic settings during rainy seasons, yet real-time and highly spatially resolved predictions of the locations, duration, and size of dengue outbreaks within cities are not currently deployed.

An integrated single software package that provides probabilistic and actionable forecast information about the locations and intensity of dengue outbreaks would enable the public and decision makers to take preventative actions, better target limited resources, anticipate surge capacity in hospitals, and prioritise and evaluate vector and disease control interventions.

We bring together an interdisciplinary team of weather and climate scientists, epidemiologists, clinicians, public health policy makers, and engineers to build a scalable, flexible and automated forecasting system that can integrate diverse and complex datasets collated across two cities in Vietnam, and produce forecasts at sub-city scales in Hanoi (emerging) and Ho Chi Min City (endemic).

A mobile and desktop application will be built where weather and disease forecasts are integrated to establish enhanced understanding of the link between them. The platform will deliver new science evaluating disease-mitigating interventions as they are deployed and provide a tool for local predictions of dengue in cities.