A project carried out by Φ-lab in conjunction with UNICEF has been selected as one of the UN agency’s top research initiatives of 2022. The success of the project, which developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution for quantifying dengue fever outbreaks, has led to its operationalisation phase receiving significant funding from the Wellcome Trust.

Dengue fever is a major public health issue in the world’s tropical and sub-tropical regions, with the disease registered as endemic in more than 100 countries according to the World Health Organisation. Forecasting outbreaks has traditionally been particularly challenging due to the complex nature of how dengue spreads, but pioneering research by Φ-lab in conjunction with UNICEF has shown that modelling from Earth observation data can successfully predict instances of the disease one month in advance.

The climate-based ensemble model uses multiple Machine Learning approaches to take account of geographical variations in dengue incidence and proved to be more accurate than previous predictive techniques when piloted in Brazil and Peru.