Post-doctoral position: Contribution of human mobilities to dengue diffusion in Bangkok

A postdoctoral position of 2 years, funded by the ANR, is available in the ” Functional Genetics of Infectious Diseases Unit” in Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, from January 2022.

Contact: [email protected]

Contribution of human mobilities to dengue diffusion in Bangkok (Thailand)

Background: Dengue is the most widespread arboviral disease of man and currently endemic in over 100 countries with more than half of the world’s population at risk. The association of socio-economic status and risk of dengue has been extensively studied, but at a city-scale identifying factors leading to hotspots of infection is complexified by intra-urban mobility and human spread of the virus. Human mobilities play an important role in the spread of infectious diseases. Their role has been well researched at international and regional level. There is growing interest to understand the contribution of human mobilities to the spatial diffusion of infectious diseases at other scales and particularly within large urban areas. Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, bears a considerable burden of reported cases of dengue and unlike rural and less populated cities has year-round transmission and endemic rather than epidemic disease transmission.

While dengue is rapidly flourishing at the cost of limited availability of preventive measures, it is crucial to make effective and efficient use of vector control measures that are already in place. In a city like Bangkok where outbreaks occur every few years despite control efforts, targeting persistent hotspots of dengue cases may improve implementation of disease control strategies, but targeting the infection source may offer a more long-term solution. Building on previous work on determinants of the spatial distribution of dengue hotspots, current work is focused on the role played by transport networks and human mobility within Bangkok as part of a project financed by the ANR entitled: Intra-Urban Discontinuities and Vector-borne Diseases. A Simulation Model of a Complex Pathogenic System.

Activities to be conducted during the post-doctorate:

– Conducting literature review on the contribution of human mobilities and transport networks to the spread of infectious diseases in cities, with a focus on dengue.

– Conducting statistical and spatial analysis on Bangkok dengue surveillance records, public transports networks, Call Detail Records/Social Network data, and population data (NSO, LandScan, WordPop)

– Identifying dengue hotspots and measuring their weight as hubs in the spread of dengue outbreaks within Bangkok.

– Exploring a possible comparison with Delhi

Requested Competences/qualities:

A good command in spatial statistics and GIS tools (i.e. QGIS, ArcGIS, Network Analyst, SatScan)