ABSTRACT
Health and related disease authorities must take into account spatial modelling aspects to understand a disease and its vector occurrences, as well as its associations with environmental and socioeconomic factors. In tropical and subtropical areas, mosquito-borne diseases are a major health issue. No medical vaccinations exist for some of these diseases, such as dengue fever (DF); therefore, the best way to avoid their impact is to model their spatial associations with the environment to help monitor their vectors and their environmental conditions. Geographic information systems (GISs) support the modelling of this spatial association using entomological, epidemiological, environmental, and socioeconomic data, as well as the
production of risk models for vectors and diseases. Because of their abilities to link different types of information on environmental, climatic, and socioeconomic factors for a given area, they can be used in different spatial statistics analyses and for the development of spatial databases that can be applied to a wide range of public health programs.
