Earth Observation and Artificial Intelligence for Global Health - AIDEO Project
Since 2020 AImageLab started a research project with the Science, Applications and Climate Department of Earth Observation Programme Directorate of ESA.
The project is part of a program which aims to indagate the spread of West Nile Virus (WNV) , which is a mosquito-borne disease commonly transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected mosquito. The Earth Observation data obtainable through ESA's Copernicus constellation is very helpful to understand if the ideal climatic and environmental conditions for mosquito population growth, and hence the spread of the virus, are present. Some key environmental variables (geographical, climatological and hydrological) that influence the transmission cycle of the virus can be monitored efficiently from satellites, which are capable of capturing these parameters frequently on a global scale.
Moreover, such environmental data can be integrated with Artificial Intelligence to create more reliable prediction models. The AIDEO project ("Artificial Intelligence and Earth Observation Data: innovative methods for monitoring West Nile Disease (WND) spread in Italy") provides a model to predict where and when the WND could spread in Italy.
According to Simone Calderara , Professor at the AImageLab research group of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy: " with AI and modern machine learning solutions it is possible to extract knowledge from the vast amount of data from Earth Observation missions and exploit the richness of weak correlations and recurrent patterns hidden inside. The unsupervised deep knowledge extraction module from AIDEO can be the cornerstone of several different applications that can benefit from the positive transfer of knowledge from the ESA Copernicus data stream".
Read the full article: http://down2earth.esa.int/2020/11/earth-observation-and-artificial-intelligence-for-global-health/