Mapping urban Aedes aegypti breeding containers: landscape-driven analysis in Bangkok, Thailand

Urban dengue risk emerges from spatially heterogeneous interactions between mosquito vectors, the environment, and human activities. In Bangkok, Aedes aegypti breeding containers are predominantly artificial recipies whose distribution is shaped by the morphological structure of urban environments, including built-up density, compactness, interstitial open spaces, and vegetation configuration, as well as by everyday practices such as storage, waste accumulation, gardening, and maintenance. We tested whether a landscape-based typology of Bangkok defines functionally similar mosquito breedings containers by conducting standardized field surveys of outdoor potential breeding containers (PBC) across 36 urban zones (May 2023-December 2024). Among the 4,921 geolocated individual PBCs, small containers (< 1 L) dominated the container pool and accounted for most between-zone variability. PBC density showed a non-linear association with the built-up density and urban compactness gradient, with higher densities at both extremes of this Axis 1. We characterized container spatial aggregation using cluster metrics and classified zones into four aggregation profiles using PAM clustering. A multivariate model combining built intensity and PCA-based descriptors (|Axis 1| and Axis 3) explained a substantial fraction of the variability in PBC cluster coverage, enabling metropolitan-scale mapping of structurally favorable environments. Overall, urban morphology provides a meaningful baseline for identifying functional mosquito breeding containers, but local socio-environmental factors remain critical for explaining breeding-site aggregation.