251 - Optimizing Trap Placement to Predict West Nile Virus Cases

How do you decide where to place a mosquito trap for West Nile Virus (WNV) surveillance? And what makes a good trap, anyway? We will present a statistical approach for determining the value of a gravid trap in predicting human WNV cases in the next two weeks within a 1.5km radius of the trap. We will then use that value to show what landscape, infrastructure, and socioeconomic factors are correlated with the ability to predict when human cases will occur, and when they will not, within the Northwest Mosquito Abatement District in Cook County, Illinois. This approach will enable resource-limited mosquito control programs to identify better locations for their trap-based surveillance.