The history of mitigation programs to contain vector-borne diseases is a story of successes and failures. Due to the complex interplay among multiple factors that determine disease dynamics, the general principles for timely and specific intervention for incidence reduction or eradication of life-threatening diseases has yet to be determined. This research discusses computational methods developed to assist in the understanding of complex relationships affecting vector-borne disease dynamics. A computational framework to assist public health practitioners with exploring the dynamics of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue in homogenous and heterogeneous populations, has been conceived, designed, and implemented. The framework integrates a stochastic computational model of interactions to simulate horizontal disease transmission. The intent of the computational modeling has been the integration of stochasticity during simulation of the disease progression while reducing the number of necessary interactions to simulate a disease outbreak. While there are improvements in the computational time reducing the number of interactions needed for simulating disease dynamics, the realization of interactions can remain computationally expensive. Using multi-threading technology to improve performance upon the original computational model, multi-threading experimental results have been tested and reported. In addition, to the contact model, the modeling of biological processes specific to the corresponding pathogen-carrier vector to increase the specificity of the vector-borne disease has been integrated. Last, automation for requesting, retrieving, parsing, and storing specific weather data and geospatial information from federal agencies to study the differences between homogenous and heterogeneous populations has been implemented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc862802 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Bravo-Salgado, Angel D |
| Contributors | Mikler, Armin, Ramisetty, Susie, Caragea, Cornelia, Renka, Robert, Acevedo, Miguel F. |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Bravo-Salgado, Angel D, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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