New insights into the application of geographical information systems and remote sensing in veterinary parasitology

Over the past 10-15 years, significant advances have been made in the development and application of geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS). In veterinary sciences, particularly in veterinary parasitology, GIS and RS offer powerful means for disease mapping, ecological analysis and epidemiological surveillance and have become indispensable tools for processing, analysing and visualising spatial data. They can also significantly assist with the assessment of the distribution of health-relevant environmental factors via interpolation and modelling. In this review, we first summarize general aspects of GIS and RS, and emphasize the most important applications of these tools in veterinary parasitology, including recent advances in territorial sampling. Disease mapping, spatial statistics, including Bayesian inference, ecological analyses and epidemiological surveillance are summarized in the next section and illustrated with a set of figures. Finally, a set of conclusions is put forward.