A prototype system addressing the critical public health need for prevention and protection against the Mosquito-Borne Diseases

Sponsor	Project	Solution provider	User
			stakeholders in the public health domain, private companies and research institutions. Hellenic Republic, Region of Central Macedonia Hellenic Republic, Region of Crete Hellenic Republic,  Region of Thessaly Italy, Region of Veneto

• Security & Safety
• Health
• Land
• Atmosphere & climate change

EYWA has created a service for private and public institutions. EYWA is engaging with the current stakeholders:  

1. Greece, Region of Central Macedonia
2. Greece, Region of Thessaly
3. Greece, Region of West Greece
4. Greece, Region of Crete
5. Italy, Region of Veneto 

EarlY WArning System for Mosquito borne Diseases EYWA, developed in the context of EuroGEO is a niche state-of-the-art tool that distils EO data, advanced epidemiological and entomological modelling, and ML big data analytics.

The uniqueness of the system can be summarised in the following distinguishing features. It delivers an operational solution, suggesting day to day prevention and door-to-door mitigation actions, as well as targeted surveillance and mosquito control operations that, undoubtedly, lead to the minimization of the entomological risk and the aversion of human cases in thousands of villages where the system has been already implemented.

The technological innovation of the system builds upon the development of standards for efficient handling of multiple entomological, epidemiological data and ancillary geospatial data, along with advanced dynamic and data driven models, to extract knowledge on the dynamics of mosquitoes’ abundance and diseases’ transmission. It is a generic, transferable and validated solution in support of the Public Health Authorities and citizens.

The common denominator of the different models is the use of big Earth Observation data from Copernicus missions and Core Services. They reliably depict and inform on the dynamics in biodiversity, climatic effects, habitats and breeding sites. Hence, EYWA exploits European innovation and investments and leverages European Exploitation platforms empowered by cloud storage and processing capacities as DIAS.

The system is already operational in 10 regions in 5 European countries at a TRL 9.

The EYWA initiative has been well received by various stakeholders in the Public Health domain as well as private companies and research institutions from countries around the Globe (Greece, Italy, Serbia, Germany, USA, Brazil, India) with 32 letters of intent/support having been received from them. 

More than 80% of the global population lives in areas at risk of at least one major Vector-Borne Disease (VBD), with more than 700.000 deaths at a global scale (WHO, 2020). Mosquitoes are the protagonists of these vectors, transmitting pathogens to living beings with the most important being the Mosquito-Borne Diseases (MBDs) in Europe, namely West Nile Fever linked to Culex mosquitoes, Malaria linked to Anopheles mosquitoes and Chikungunya, Dengue and Zika linked to Aedes mosquitoes.

There is a constantly increasing need to innovate on how the continuous threat of MBDs are confronted, treated but most of all foreseen. This gave birth to the idea of EYWA, an integrated and contemporary EarlY WArning System (EWS) for MBD.

EYWA builds on a modular system architecture of 7 TIERS that allows federated access to global data repositories, exploits European infrastructure as Copernicus, Copernicus Core Services, and DIAS (CreoDIAS), uses advanced DataCube technology for the processing of big EO data in conjunction with in-situ trap and other environmental/epidemiological data, and invokes validated ML/DL entomological and deterministic (dynamic) epidemiological models. The challenges in the proposed action is to further develop and adapt the models to treat effectively non-European datasets, which in principle suffer from scarcity, data sharing incompatibility and standardization issues, the latter making the main challenge towards the implementation of EYWA globally.

The EYWA system provides a number of benefits:

• Generates a combined database of entomological & epidemiological data.
• Creates standards around the entomological & epidemiological data.
• Provides mosquito population predictions on multiple spatiotemporal resolutions.
• Provides West Nile Virus risk forecast in multiple spatiotemporal resolutions.
• Raises the awareness around the issues and risks of Mosquito-borne diseases.

Learn more about the service: http://epidemics.space.noa.gr:8081/

Learn more about e-shape: www.e-shape.eu

A question? Contact the Helpdesk: https://helpdesk.e-shape.eu