Suppressing dengue via a drone system

Abstract

Dengue is one of the rapidly spreading and deadly diseases in Sri Lanka, transmitted by the bite of infected female Aedes mosquitoes. Public Health Inspectors (PHIs) in Sri Lanka are facing a problem of identifying certain dengue mosquito breeding sites which are capable of retaining water. The goal of such inspection of suspected sites is to reduce the number of dengue patients by eradicating dengue mosquito habitats. A drone which has been created with the rapid advancement of technology, is one of the most cost effective apparatus to capture the mosquito breeding sites. It can inspect both accessible and inaccessible places to a human. With respect to the aforesaid context, this paper presents a simple and a novel approach to identify dengue mosquito breeding sites via drone images. The proposed approach captures the images of the water retention areas via a drone and generates the map, marking those areas in the map. The field test found that the proposed method, produces a satisfactory level of accuracy in identifying possible water retention areas and the final results depend on the drone camera tilt angle and the effect of shadows.