Decades-long attempts to fight widespread and debilitating parasitic diseases are in jeopardy due to climate change and other human-made environmental changes. Increased frequency and intensity of rainfall due to climate change will affect several diseases, including schistosomiasis, which is spread by freshwater snails. Since snails’ distributions are sensitive to environmental changes, managing snail populations is essential to lowering the risk of transmission.
An AI model called species distribution modeling, has been developed by researchers from Brazil and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Stanford HAI). It uses a combination of machine learning and remotely-sensed data such as large-scale climate models and satellite imagery to determine every possible location for a species based on where it has and hasn’t been found in the past.
The model can then predict how changes in temperature, rainfall, and urbanization will affect the species’ distributions in the future. This model has unprecedented precision, which helps researchers understand where Schistosomiasis could appear next.
Understanding these changes is necessary for the scientific control of the diseases in the future. AI will undoubtedly play a significant role in the field.
