WaterPath: a future scenario toolkit for waterborne infectious disease modelling

Our vision is to create WaterPath: an open-source modelling toolkit that can be used to quantify and visualise the impact of climate change and socio-economic development on waterborne pathogens and AMR bacteria in surface water and consequent disease risk.

The toolkit will be based on an existing mechanistic water quality model that will be extended to generate climate-sensitive projections and disease risk estimation. We envision that the WaterPath toolkit becomes the main point of reference for modelling population exposure to waterborne diseases in future climate scenario analysis.

To achieve that, we will target a diverse audience of users: scientists, modellers, data scientists, software engineers and policy makers.

By utilising past work and existing connections with global initiatives, we will create a unique community of practice that will participate in the conceptualisation and testing of the toolkit, while also disseminating our work to create space for future extensions and open-source contributions.