Dengue Risk Zone Index (DRZI) for Mapping Dengue Risk Areas

要旨

Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are used to develop the risk zone map of Dengue Fever (DF) / Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) in Chachoengsao province, Thailand. The risk zonation index is derived using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The medical database considered for the study was referenced to the geographical and meteorological data layers. Based on this analysis, potential areas were categorized as very high, high, moderately high, moderately low, low, and very low risk categories. The model used in this study provided valuable information to prepare DF/DHF risk zones for decision support to mitigate the epidemic. Factor weights used in AHP were evaluated and found to be acceptable as the consistency ratio (CR) was 0.031, which was < 0.1. Spatial modelling included a huge database about physical-environment, climatic, and demographic factors. Approximately 74.96% people lived in very high, high, and moderately high risk zones. The most at risk zone was shown to be Mueang Chachoengsao district with a population of 142,485 or 22.34% of total population. The results from AHP based DF/DHF risk zonation gave useful information on different levels of disease risk areas. The methodology is general and can be applied in other application fields, such as disease outbreak during natural disasters.