Abstract

Agent-based models (ABMs) are used to model infectious diseases and disease-transmitting vectors. Malaria is a deadly infectious disease in humans, transmitted by Anopheles mosquito vectors. Although geographic information system (GIS) has been used before with ABMs, no ABM-based malaria study showed the usage of custom-built spatial outputs integrated within a modeling framework. In this paper, we show how to effectively integrate a malaria ABM with GIS-based, spatially derived parameters. For a specific study area, we process GIS data layers, create hypothetical scenarios, produce maps, and analyze biological insights. Results indicate that availability of resources and relative distances between them are crucial determinants for malaria transmission. The maps also reveal potential hotspots for the measured variables. We argue that such integrated approaches, which combine knowledge from entomological, epidemiological, simulation-based, and geo-spatial domains, are required for the identification of relationships between spatial variables, and may have important implications for malaria vector control. © 2013 DIME UNIVERSITAT DI GENOVA.