App that locates mosquitoes, helps eradicate malaria
A novel app that identifies locations of previously unknown mosquito breeding habitats and helps treat them within the same day has been developed, and is helping African countries fight the menace of malaria.
New York: A novel app that identifies locations of previously unknown mosquito breeding habitats and helps treat them within the same day has been developed, and is helping African countries fight the menace of malaria.
The smartphone app, created by a public health researcher at University of South Florida, pairs an algorithm with a drone and satellite images to identify locations of previously unknown mosquito breeding habitats.
The system works by identifying specific environments and organisms by their unique "fingerprint" - a red-green-blue value associated exclusively with a species or habitat.
Benjamin Jacob, Associate Professor at the USF, trained the drone to sense and capture image datasets through his algorithms that allow the system to understand key features, like mud or vegetation, based on their fingerprints. Each image is then processed and gridded with identified sources of water on those surfaces.
