Predicting Future Disease Burden in a Rapidly Changing Climate

Abstract

The interplay of a rapidly changing climate and infectious disease occurrence is emerging as a critical topic, requiring investigation of possible direct, as well as indirect, connections between disease processes and climate-related variation and phenomena. First, we introduce and overview three infectious disease exemplars (dengue, influenza, valley fever) representing different transmission classes (insect-vectored, human-to-human, environmentally-transmitted) to illuminate the complex and significant interplay between climate disease processes, as well as to motivate discussion of how Sandia can transform the field, and change our understanding of climate-driven infectious disease spread. We also review state-of-the-art epidemiological and climate modeling approaches, together with data analytics and machine learning methods, potentially relevant to climate and infectious disease studies. We synthesize the modeling and disease exemplars information, suggesting initial avenues for research and development (R&D) in this area, and propose potential sponsors for this work. Whether directly or indirectly, it is certain that a rapidly changing climate will alter global disease burden. The trajectory of climate change is an important control on this burden, from local, to regional and global scales. The efforts proposed herein respond to the National Research Councils call for the creation of a multidisciplinary institute that would address critical aspects of these interlocking, cascading crises.