Researchers at the University of South Florida are turning to artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to track down mosquito breeding grounds across Hillsborough County, as local health officials grapple with a dengue fever outbreak. The strategy pairs algorithms with aerial imagery to pinpoint standing water in tires, birdbaths and flowerpots before crews move in to treat it, often the same day the habitat is found.
A Smarter Hunt for Standing Water
USF Associate Professor Benjamin Jacob leads the effort through the university's Department of Biostatistics and Data Analysis, working to identify and eliminate mosquito breeding grounds as dengue fever cases rise in the Tampa Bay area, according to FOX 13 Tampa Bay. The researchers use satellite imagery to narrow in on potential mosquito habitats to within about 10 meters, then apply geographic mapping to direct treatment crews to exact locations rather than relying on broad aerial or ground spraying. Jacob has described the approach simply: find the breeding sites and destroy them, instead of treating everything with insecticide.
The underlying technology has roots that go back several years. Jacob previously created a smartphone app that pairs his algorithm with drone and satellite images to identify previously unknown mosquito breeding habitats so they can be treated within the same day, according to USF. That mapping work once revealed more than 9,000 mosquito habitats carrying dengue and Zika viruses across Hillsborough, Manatee and Polk counties, and testing found the drone-based system was 100% accurate in locating bodies of water where mosquitoes were most likely to breed.
From Tampa Bay to Africa and Southeast Asia
Jacob's work extends well beyond Florida. He launched a program called Seek and Destroy that trains government agencies in Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda to use the app in areas hit by infectious disease, the university's report notes. Jacob, who also works in Africa, has said that identifying smaller breeding sites is critical to controlling mosquito populations, and he calls the overall team strategy Seek and Destroy — the same name he gave the international training program.
USF's broader research on this front includes separate work by professor Sriram Chellappan and student assistant Mona Minakshi, who developed an AI technique that detects mosquito breeding habitats in drone video and extracts their GPS coordinates, per the university's engineering news page. Those frames and locations are sent back in real time to public health officials so crews can act on them quickly. During a field test in Manatee County, Jacob and his assistants verified that habitats flagged by the computer algorithms did in fact contain mosquito larvae.
Targeting Instead of Spraying Everything
The goal of narrowing in on specific habitats, rather than spraying entire fields, is to cut down on overall insecticide use, according to the same USF materials. Researchers have also proposed letting drones detect a breeding ground and then spray a controlled amount of insecticide directly onto it rather than broadly dousing large areas — though a planned Manatee County test of that insecticide-delivery system was delayed by the COVID-19 outbreak, and the evidence does not show whether it was ultimately carried out.
USF researchers demonstrated the current technology to Department of Health workers and say they will keep working with state and local health officials to locate mosquito breeding habitats and improve mosquito control, per FOX 13's reporting. The approach was partnered with the Florida Department of Health, and the station's report draws on an interview with Jacob along with information from that agency.
Dengue Numbers and the Push for Backyard Checks
Florida has reported 425 dengue fever cases in the latest Florida Department of Health report, with Hillsborough County accounting for 346 of them — more than 80% of the state's reported total, according to the agency's figures as relayed by FOX 13. Hillsborough County says it is working closely with the Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County on surveillance, education and treatment in affected areas, according to a Hillsborough County announcement. The county's response has also included a method meant to target mosquito larvae in spots that are difficult to reach with traditional aerial treatment, per a separate county update.
Discarded tires near homes or businesses can make ideal mosquito breeding grounds, and Hillsborough Solid Waste customers can drop off up to 12 tires a year at no cost at any of the county's five Solid Waste collection sites, the county notes. USF researchers are recommending that residents regularly inspect their yards and dump out standing water to prevent mosquito breeding, checking birdbaths, flowerpots, discarded containers and old tires where water can collect unnoticed.
How Tampa Bay's Effort Fits a Global Pattern
Hillsborough's push mirrors research happening elsewhere. Stanford researchers deployed drones and AI in Makassar, Indonesia, to detect mosquito breeding sites faster and more accurately than traditional ground surveys, according to Stanford University. In that effort, an AI model identified nearly twice as many discarded tires as human analysts reviewing the same drone imagery across a 4-kilometer stretch of the city, and the Stanford team said the method could be deployed anywhere mosquito-borne disease threatens communities, including in the United States.
A separate study published on ScienceDirect evaluated several computational approaches, including convolutional neural networks, for spotting potential breeding sites such as water containers in drone imagery; one CNN model reached a mean average precision of 0.9651 for object detection. That research pointed to Zanzibar's malaria elimination program and the city of São Paulo as examples of public health authorities already using drones to map and combat mosquito-borne disease vectors including dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that its dengue surveillance figures are provisional and subject to change, noting that state, territorial and local health departments may have more up-to-date information than what the federal data shows. Florida's own weekly arbovirus report for the period covering October 4-10 separately logged 26 international travel-associated dengue cases, a tally distinct from the statewide and county totals cited in the latest Florida Department of Health figures.
