U.S. Department of State’s “DipNote”: Arming Citizen Scientists With an App to Identify Zika Carriers
Avery Waite, program analyst at USAID’s Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact, discusses an app developed to identify breeding sites for mosquitoes potentially carrying the Zika virus. Waite writes, “Funded by NASA, the app, called GLOBE Observer Mosquito Habitat Mapper, allows anyone with a smartphone to identify potential mosquito breeding sites and count samples of mosquito larvae. … This information enters a global database, which can be used by scientists to predict mosquito population dynamics and potentially by public health authorities to manage risk of diseases, such as the Zika virus and dengue” (3/29).