In-situ and Remote Sensing Networks for Environmental Monitoring and Global Assessment of Leptospirosis Outbreaks

Leptospirosis is a disease that affects human population and can claim many victims with large outbreaks associated with natural disasters. This work focuses on the technological aspects for inexpensive climate monitoring techniques based on ground and satellite sensors for obtaining information prior to disease outbreaks in under-developed regions and on water-quality sensors that can lead to radical changes in our ability to detect and abate this disease. The remote deployment of such sensors in areas where outbreaks can occur can help in enhancingin real-time the spatial and temporal resolution of information and allows unattended operation that will be particularly useful for monitoring under extreme climate events. Such types of monitoring advancements, when coupled with regular geographical, population and habitat monitoring can assess the hazards and risks to local population prior to a disease outbreak. Then in the eventual aftermath, it can assist in identification of affected geographical locations where abatement solutions will be required, and eventually in the assessment of the effectiveness of control measures. This work explores recent releases of open global observation data and a range of in-situ environmental monitoring tools of increasing complexity for measuring several parameters andfor detecting contaminants and pathogens that were previously irresolvable due to the high degree of complexityinthe diagnosis of this disease.