IJERPH, Vol. 17, Pages 7872: ZanzaMapp: A Scalable Citizen Science Tool to Monitor Perception of Mosquito Abundance and Nuisance in Italy and Beyond

IJERPH, Vol. 17, Pages 7872: ZanzaMapp: A Scalable Citizen Science Tool to Monitor Perception of Mosquito Abundance and Nuisance in Italy and Beyond International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health doi: 10.3390/ijerph17217872 Authors: Beniamino Caputo Mattia Manica Federico Filipponi Marta Blangiardo Pietro Cobre Luca Delucchi Carlo Maria De Marco Luca Iesu Paola Morano Valeria Petrella Marco Salvemini Cesare Bianchi Alessandra della Torre Mosquitoes represent a considerable nuisance and are actual/potential vectors of human diseases in Europe. Costly and labour-intensive entomological monitoring is needed to correct planning of interventions aimed at reducing nuisance and the risk of pathogen transmission. The widespread availability of mobile phones and of massive Internet connections opens the way to the contribution of citizen in complementing entomological monitoring. ZanzaMapp is the first mobile “mosquito” application for smartphones specifically designed to assess citizens’ perception of mosquito abundance and nuisance in Italy. Differently from other applications targeting mosquitoes, ZanzaMapp prioritizes the number of records over their scientific authentication by requesting users to answer four simple questions on perceived mosquito presence/abundance/nuisance and geo-localizing the records. The paper analyses 36,867 ZanzaMapp records sent by 13,669 devices from 2016 to 201...
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research