Identifying urban landscape patterns and influences on Dengue Incidence in Mandaue City, Philippines

Abstract

Climate change-induced extreme rainfall events have become more frequent inundating large
areas in highly urbanized cities in the Philippines. With these potential flood events, it is
critical to investigate the potential consequences, such as vector-borne illness epidemics like
dengue fever, which have been associated with the monsoon season in the Philippines. In this
paper, we study the association of a dengue outbreak in Mandaue city, Philippines with
independent variables including climatic variables, drainage infrastructures, urbanization
levels and vegetation. We use the Global Moran’s I index to measure spatial autocorrelation
between the locations of dengue cases while Spearman’s rank correlation was used to examine
relationships between dengue cases and the chosen landscape variables. The results of this
work suggest that inadequate flood control and water disposal facilities can increase the risk
of a dengue outbreak especially in densely populated areas.