Modeling Distributional Potential of Infectious Diseases

Mapping disease risk assists in understanding disease epidemiology and illuminates details on spatial patterns of species involved in the disease transmission cycle. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for the ecological niche modeling (ENM) and epidemiological modeling (EM) to offer diverse applications for the two approaches in anticipating disease risk. The two modeling approaches present a methodological suite of geospatial, ecological, and epidemiological toolkits in the field of epidemiology and public health. ENM combines occurrence records and environmental information to project the habitat suitability for a certain species and identifies ecological drivers of its distribution. Alternatively, EM is used to describe the health state change (e.g., susceptible, exposed, infected, and removed) of both vectors and hosts with mathematical equations. Finally, this chapter also identifies the pros and cons of each single modeling approach and offers new opportunities for integrating both ecological niche and epidemiological modeling approaches for a better understanding of disease dynamics.