Disease mapping and risk assessment in veterinary parasitology: some case studies

Disease mapping and risk assessment are important tasks in the area of medical and veterinary epidemiology. The development of methods for mapping diseases has progressed considerably in recent years. Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and Spatial Analysis represent new tools for the study of epidemiology, and their application to parasitology has become more and more advanced, in particular to study the spatial and temporal patterns of diseases. The present review highlights the usefulness of GIS and RS in veterinary parasitology in order to better know the epidemiology of parasite organisms, causing either snail/arthropod borne diseases or direct transmissible diseases, mostly in small areas with a strong impact by man. It demonstrates the potential of these technologies to serve as effective tools for: data capture, mapping and analysis for the development of descriptive parasitological maps; studying the environmental features that influence the distribution of parasites; predicting parasite occurrence/seasonality based on their environmental requirements and as decision support for disease intervention; and surveillance and monitoring of animal diseases.