Last Updated: 25/10/2022
Developing a mosquito monitoring tool for least developed countries (HumBug)
Objectives
This study will enable us to further development and demonstration of this innovative system in rural Tanzania to provide high-quality real-time data on the diversity, distribution, and abundance of malaria vectors. Combining these data with environmental variables from remote si=ensing data we will also demonstrate the potential of this innovative system to create dynamic heat maps of their distribution, providing information to 1) healthcare practitioners to better target mosquito control methods ii) health policymakers to enhance more effective intervention policies and iii) academic community, providing unprecedented levels of occurrence, behavioral and ecological mosquito data.
Specifically, this project aims to
- Conduct field trials, to compare and evaluate the Humbug sensor with other vector monitoring methods such as Centers for Diseases Control light traps (CDC-LT) and mosquito electrocuting grid traps (MET).
- Establishing the feasibility of using HumBug to monitor mosquito data in poor areas where it is difficult to conduct traditional surveys.
- Integrate cell phone-based airtime or cash payments into the MozzWear app to facilitate community involvement in HumBug mosquito surveys
- Develop a web-based platform with vector occurrence and an abundance of data
The device will run a simple mosquito/not mosquito algorithm on short snippets of audio data (<5 seconds) to establish whether a mosquito flight tone has been captured. If no mosquito is detected, the audio is discarded and deleted. If the algorithm indicates some probability of mosquito presence (above a designated threshold of probability), the snippet is saved. The project will run for 36 months and we aim to sufficiently demonstrate our proof of concept to ensure future academic involvement allowing HumBug to be a globally accessible tool used in the detection of primary mosquito vector species.
Mosquito surveys are needed to identify the presence and abundance of species that can transmit diseases such as malaria, dengue, zika and chikungunya. Millions of dollars are spent each year to control both the vectors and their vector-borne diseases and in combination, these have resulted in significant successes in recent years. However, between 2015 and 2018 malaria control stalled. This is due, in part to emerging insecticide resistance behavioral avoidance of insecticides by mosquitoes, and inherent behavioral plasticity among some species that keep them out of contact with the mostly indoor-based methods of mosquito control.
New mosquito survey methods that provide real-time species-specific occurrence and abundance data could revolutionize the way vector control is implemented, allowing highly effective timely, and species-specific mosquito control as well as providing red flags where interventions are falling
Over the past four years, a multidisciplinary group at the University of Oxford has developed a novel mosquito survey tool (HUMBUG) that enables real-time species-specific occurrence and abundance vector data in malaria-endemic regions. Humbug tr transforms a budget smartphone into a sensor that detects and identifies host-seeking mosquitoes using the acoustic signature of their flight tone. It can generate unprecedented levels of urgently needed high-quality, spatially accurate mosquito occurrence data without incurring any risk to those conducting the surveys. It is low cost, running on budget smartphones or wearable smart devices(using our MozzWear app as well as low energy acoustic loggers (Audiomoth). MozzWear records mosquito flight tone and along with the time and location sends the data to a central server where the species is identified using a suite of algorithms that distinguish between species according to their acoustic signature.
Jul 2019 — Nov 2022
$349,213
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