Agent-based model for malaria: examining the impact of existing and novel vector control interventions

Abstract

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease. It is transmitted among humans through female Anopheles mosquitoes. Anopheles vagus (in short An. vagus), one of the major mosquitoes (referred to as vectors in Malaria epidemiology because they carry the parasites) widely distributed all over the world specially in South Asia, is a dangerous species that transmits malaria among humans. An agent-based model (ABM) is a useful tool to represent the complex biological systems. In this thesis an ABM is developed based on the underlying biological attributes for An. vagus found in the literature, real life eld data on An. vagus, and the mathematical equations found in the literature for generic Anopheles species. This ABM is referred to as ABMvagus. ABMvagus is designed, developed and implemented extending the previous ABM (known as ABMgambiae) based on Anopheles gambiae (in short An. gambiae). ABMvagus is further extended to adopt the environmental factors like temperature and rainfall. ABMvagus is veri ed and validated by the basic techniques, through review to materialize the concept, docking it with real life eld data of An. vagus and by some experiments. ABMvagus is generalized in such a way so that it can be used for other species which transmit malaria among humans. The incorporating logics (in ABMvagus) of the environmental factors that a ect the vector population can be applied for ABMgambiae too. The impact of the environmental factors on vector population produced by ABMvagus and ABMgambiae are examined and analyzed. For controlling malaria, some vector control interventions are applied to prevent human transmissions. Lots of interventions are available. Some logics of the interventions are introduced, designed, developed, implemented and applied in ABMvagus to examine the impact of those interventions over vector population dynamics. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) as an extension of the ABMvagus is introduced to present the instant simulation statistics like the abundance of female, the abundance of larvae etc. This GUI also presents the mosquito agents, house holds and aquatic habitats in a landscape view. By clicking on each item in the GUI the current status of the selected items can be checked.