Paper
Spatial Correlation of Tuberculosis (TB) Incidents to the MODIS LST Biophysical Signature of African Countries
- Authors:
- Andreas Tsatsaris; George Miliaresis
- Abstract
- Monthly night averaged land surface temperature (LST) imagery is analyzed throughout a year-period (2008), in an attempt to capture the seasonal variability of LST, and parametrically represent and classify the African Countries. Segmentation outlined in an objective way the temporal variation of LST during the 2008, grouped in 9 zones with distinct spatial distribution, each one presenting a distinct annual variation of monthly LST. Tuberculosis incidence per county for the year 2008 was correlated to the percentage areal occurrence of the 9 biophysical zones. More specifically statistical analysis indicates that there is an increase of TB-IR per country if the percent occurrence of either zone 4 or zone 6 is increased. Such evidence was already known, but it is the first time that this correlation was quantified on the basis of high resolution LST data comparable to the previous studies that were based on the very sparse meteorological stations network. The MODIS multi-temporal LST data can assist the modeling of the disease risk and disease spatial distribution as well as environmental modeling, climatic change studies at moderate resolution/country level scale.
- Keywords
- Tuberculosis; environmental health; geographical information systems; land surface temperature; MODIS
- StartPage
- 49
- EndPage
- 57
- Doi