Mosquitoes aren’t the only peskiest creatures on Earth They cause over 700 million people every year with dangerous illnesses like Zika, Malaria, Dengue Fever along with Yellow Fever. The best way to prevent them is through the defense to stop mosquito bites before they occur is essential.
Google along with SC Johnson, the maker of the repellant brand Off together to create a forecasting tool designed to aid consumers in coping with one of the summer’s most infamous pests: mosquitoes.
It’s been dubbed the Off!Cast. The tool leverages Google Cloud’s geospatial and analytics technology, as well as SC Johnson’s expertise in combating mosquitoes that transmit a variety of illnesses. The tool will show the estimated size of the mosquito population within a specific region based on the ZIP code.
It is “very accurate,” says Maude Meier an entomologist from SC Johnson, and uses an array of billions of climate points obtained from Google Earth Engine, along with previous mosquito estimates from thousands of places and a thorough understanding of the lifespan of mosquitoes. The team verified the model using the model for earlier years and compared the results to the actual mosquito data.
The tool can also be used by the government to perform broader actions and possibly spray specific regions at specific dates. “We expect this to be used by communities and public health organizations…that don’t have the resources to do this type of work, which is really computationally intensive,” Herring says. Herring. The group also plans to expand the tool’s use to other countries. Brazil and Mexico could be next.