Spatial temporal variation of dengue spread in different agro climatic zones of Tamil Nadu, India

Dengue is one of the significant public health pandemic problems causing a lot of morbidity and mortality every year around the world. This scenario prevails in Tamil Nadu also. Apart from the serious steps taken by the government of Tamil Nadu for its prevention, the incidences of dengue keep on occurring every year in different parts. The spread of dengue is caused by the mosquitoes, namely, AedesAegypti and AedesAlbopictus. It is reasonable to expect that the factors like demographic trends, climatic conditions like temperature are the additional factorsassociated with thespread of the epidemic.Epidemiological data often exhibit spatial patterns, which can be studied using autocorrelation. Simultaneous autoregressive (SAR) models which are designed to model spatially autocorrelated data based on neighborhood relationships, which will really be helpful for the prevention and control of the disease. This paper focuses on exploring the spatial and temporal variability of dengue incidences in Tamil Nadu over the past twelve yearsin different agro-climatic zones using Spatial Autoregressive model and elucidates the association of climatic factors with dengue incidence.