This phase I project is designed to examine the feasibility of developing large-scale digital environmental data bases that can be used to identify environmental risk factors associated with vector-borne diseases. The project will involve combining computerized geographic information systems, remote sensing and epidemiological analyses to generate predictive risk maps of the most common vector-borne disease in the US, Lyme disease, for an endemic area in Maryland. The area under study represents more than 6600 square kilometers and the analyses will be Derformed at a resolution of 1.5 hectares. The study has three main aims: to resolve technological issues involved in developing detailed, high resolution environmental data bases for the region; to identify environmental risk factors associated with Lyme disease in the region; and to test the predictive capability of the model of disease risk that is developed from the analysis.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:This project will result in a marketable product and a service that has at least two
Benefits: I) a Lyme disease risk map for the Baltimore metropolitan area, 2) a procedure for preparing Iyme disease risk maps for other areas of the country. Preliminary discussions have been held with several firms that perform pre-phase I environmental risk assessments. They have expressed interest in licensing use of Lyme disease risk maps for a fee.National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID)
