DART team at the DART kick-off meeting

About the project

Doctor Huy is presenting on DART to HRAB (health research advisory board) at OUCRU

DART - Dengue Advanced Readiness Tools, is a multifaceted dengue outbreak forecasting system. It is an ongoing project by Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU), funded by the Wellcome Trust. The project is supported by an international multidisciplinary team.

Background and aims

There is a need for dengue outbreak forecasting systems that can accommodate variable time scales and at small spatial scales. Spatially targeted interventions for dengue control in Vietnam are usually performed at the local scale, and key decisions need to be made on different time scales. The ability to identify in advance the precise location, size and duration of a dengue outbreak is important for targeted mitigation efforts.

DART aims to provide high-resolution dengue forecasting over different time scales, including real-time. This forecast information will be disseminated through a web application that is available both on desktop and mobile devices. Stakeholders include the general public, local policy makers, clinicians, health practitioners, and interested research scientists.

The project will start out with 2 exemplar cities in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The spatial resolution for the forecasts will be districts (administrative level 2) and time scales will range from real-time to 4-week ahead.

Project timeline

Data Integration

Project data platform for modelling, data integration and visualization
Citable Github release version of all code used within the platform on Zenodo
Full documentation of the developed DART system and ste-by-step guide to setup infrastructure
Ongoing system monitoring, updating and snagging

Modelling

Weather forecast skill assessment for Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi with a forecast lead time of up to 7 days
Downscaled weather forecast of precipitation, temperature and humidity based on ECMWF forecasts
Expand weather forecast skill assessment for raw and calibrated data to 2 weeks forecast range
A mosquito population dynamics model that predicts adult densities based on land cover and weather variables
A flexible plug-and-play spatial dengue epidemiological model
Forcasting engines for epidemiological dynamics and hospital occupancy
Dengue forecast skill assessment for Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi

Data Visualization

A requirement analysis document for visualization based on a series of discussion with four categories of stakeholders
A mobile application for disseminative visualization, forcussing on the stakeholder groups of general public and policy makers
A web application with multiple visualization tools for observational, analytical model-developmental and disseminative visualization
A citable Github version of all code for the web application

Meet the team

Meet the people that are driving this new effort. We are a international multidisciplinary team with people from the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU), The University of Oxford, National Institute Of Hygiene And Epidemiology (NIHE), Ho Chi Minh City Center for Disease Control (HCDC), and the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH).
Learn more

  • Dr. Sarah Sparrow

    Dr. Sarah Sparrow

    Principal Investigator

  • Dr. Marc Choisy

    Dr. Marc Choisy

    Co-Principal Investigator

  • Assoc. Prof. Sophie Yacoub

    Assoc. Prof. Sophie Yacoub

    Co-Principal Investigator

Our partners and collaborators