Former National Science Foundation Director, Rita Colwell, continues her research on cholera, using remote sensing satellites to predict outbreaks. Colwell was the keynote speaker at the 2004 ESRI User Conference, and I spoke to her about her research then. Her talk centered on the use of geospatial technologies to battle cholera outbreaks, a water-borne infectious disease with severe impacts in developing countries.
Cholera outbreaks have been linked with environmental factors, including sea surface temperature, ocean height, and biomass . Colwell and her team at the University of Maryland, College Park, have used satellite imagery to track this climatological information, and the data is now can being used to predict outbreaks of cholera before they occur.
“We are now beginning to understand infectious disease is a moving target,” said Colwell. “As the climate shifts, any disease with an environmental stage or vector is going to be affected.”
On Sept. 8, Professor Colwell, will deliver the inaugural Environmental Microbiology lecture “Climate, Oceans, Global Warming and Cholera,” where she’ll describe her work on climate change and the prediction of outbreaks of infectious disease.
