Earth Observation Drones: Now for Mosquito Surveillance and Control
Strange to hear, but it’s true.
Recently, global health security has shown concern over the regional expansion of vector-borne infectious diseases, such as dengue, yellow fever, malaria, Zika, and chikungunya.
From weather to local human migration and housing to mosquito species’ behaviors, an increase in residual transmission, coupled with ecological heterogeneity in everything, presents many challenges to effective mosquito control.
Thus, mosquito control programs are now aligned with surveillance and targeted control of mosquitoes and potential vectors of pathogens that can cause vector-borne diseases.
This article will elaborate on the application of drones in mosquito control and surveillance.
How did the idea of drones come into the process?
Mosquito control personnel used to find and target mosquitoes’ egg-laying sites to eliminate immature aquatic mosquitoes before they could emerge as flying, blood-feeding adult mosquitos from eggs. Mosquito species lay eggs in different locations, such as standing water, woodland pools dependent on rainfall patterns or tides in brackish salt marsh environments, or permanent retention ponds.
Drones help provide data on the occurrence and abundance of adult mosquitoes monitored via trapping as part of a surveillance program and can help mosquito control personnel develop control plans.
Personnel owning data on the habitats of this mosquito biology of certain mosquitoes can control potentially dangerous or nuisance mosquito species. In remote areas like salt marshes and crop irrigation fields, larval habitats become difficult to find or access, and this can also hamper control efforts.
Thus, mosquito control operators are turning toward high-tech tools to help with the survey of mosquito habitats, along with the application of insecticides.
Aerial Surveillance and Insecticide Application Using Drones
Mosquito control programs are currently using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones to conduct surveillance and eliminate mosquito breeding sites that impact residential or other public areas in remote locations that are difficult to reach by land.
Fixed-wing or rotary-wing drones allow operators to view images of potential larval production habitats; moreover, they monitor drainage patterns, soil types, and topography in real-time.
Besides identifying larval habitats, drones are also capable of carrying and applying larvicides or adulticides to small and targeted areas. Drones are generally fitted with a global positioning system (GPS) that can track the flight patterns of mosquitos in conjunction with insecticide applications. The mosquito control operator can remotely pilot the drone according to their needs, while in some cases, autopilot programs are also available for pre-programmed flights.
Drones are instrumental in targeting specific areas with larvicides or adulticides and are an inexpensive alternative to truck-mounted applications that require a high degree of droplet drift to reach a target area in remote locations.
As compared to helicopters, which were traditionally used for monitoring, the use of mosquito drones is less disruptive and potentially less expensive for remote areas. In addition to mosquito control operators, drones are used for many agricultural operations in the surveillance and application of insecticides over the field.
What do Earth observation drones contribute to the market?
The research and development of drones by military agencies for over 90 years resulted in the development of the first drone for non-military applications in 2006.
Presently, various Earth observation applications, such as surveying, mapping, inspections, and surveillance, collection of analytical geospatial data, are also advancing at a substantial pace in utilizing drones.
As compared to satellite imagery, drones possess the capability to collect large volumes of geospatial data more efficiently, quickly, and cost-effectively which is the reason for the expansion of related drone services and manufacturing businesses.
According to a report by BIS Research, the global Earth observation drones market was valued at $9.01 billion in 2021, and it is estimated to reach $18.21 billion by 2032 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.88% during the forecast period 2022–2032.
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Industrial and commercial applications of drones are some of the major factors fueling the adoption of drone applications.
Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial applications of drones, including solar panel inspections, pipeline inspections, oil and gas field monitoring, and agriculture monitoring, have also increased widely.
Conclusion
Drones are a cost-effective method to increase the potential applications and effectiveness of smaller mosquito control programs. Along with defense, industrial, and agricultural applications, drones are playing a significant role in the healthcare sector too, which includes protection from vector-borne diseases and infections.
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