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In the Netherlands, the Mosquito Radar (Dutch: Muggenrader) has been monitoring the occurrence of mosquitoes and associated nuisance for years. The Wageningen Mosquito Radar, which was produced by Arnold van Vliet and others, is one of the best examples of successfully applied citizen science. However, the Mosquito Radar has siblings in other parts of the world as well. This family is now joining forces to provide a global image of the mosquito situation.
Zika
Global Mosquito Alert focuses on the monitoring and control of mosquitoes and the diseases they spread, including Zika, yellow fever, chikungunya, dengue, malaria and the West Nile fever. It is the first platform to use world-wide citizen science technology to map mosquito populations. Each year, 500 million people become ill due to mosquito bites and about 2.7 million people perish.
Within this project, the Mosquito Radar collaborates with organisations such as Mosquito Alert in Spain, the Italian Zanzamapp and the GLOBE Observer Mosquito Habitat Mapper in the United States. The new alliance will be coordinating the existing methods to monitor and map the spread of mosquitoes, their breeding areas and the nuisance they cause. To accomplish this, they will also look into ways of applying the latest DNA identification methods. Mosquito Radar is mainly aimed at the nuisance caused by mosquitoes occurring in the Netherlands and Belgium.
UN
The Global Mosquito Alert was set up and will be maintained by Environment Live, the scientific and knowledge platform of the United Nations that collects environmental and research data and makes it available to the public. Environment Live directly provides policy makers and the broader public with open data. At the moment, only the Spanish mosquito observations are being shared on Environment Live, but the remaining networks, including Mosquito Radar, will be linked in the next few months.