KOCHI: They cause many diseases, some very fatal. Mosquitoes, carriers of many deadly illnesses, have time and again proved their resistance to many of our preventive measures. But, what if we are able to detect the mosquitoes in an area and know about the diseases they might cause.
A group of youngsters from College of Engineering Trivandrum are developing a website based on machine learning to track different types of mosquitoes using parameters like temperature, soil moisture, elevation and location. It also detects the most probable mosquito-transmitted disease in a specific region.
The idea was developed by Abhijith Nandagopal, Chithra Parameswaran, Hari Nair S and Harisankar R for the International SpaceApps Challenge, one of the major problem-solving and open innovation competitions held annually by the US Space agency NASA, which was recently hosted by the Kerala Startup Mission at Technopark.
“When we decided to present our idea in the SpaceApps Challenge, we thought of doing something different. We realised the diseases caused by mosquito bites are a major threat to human lives. This is how we decided to come up with a website through which one can detect the type of mosquito population in an area and then take necessary precautions at the right time,” said Abhijith Nandagopal, a third-year Computer Science student.
This machine learning-based website can be used to generate awareness among users, tourists and can also be used by the government and authorities to curb excessive disease-transmitting mosquito population.
The web page will also give the details about the vaccines that can be obtained in case of emergency. "This could be of help to travellers to take necessary precautions to protect themselves from the diseases spread by type of mosquitoes that exist in the place they go," said Abhijith.
It uses datasets provided by NASA for the parameter genus correlation and is being made in a manner that gives you the required result at a current time in a location around the planet.