I am PhD student researching the impacts of floods and tropical storms on infectious diseases. My main aim is to create a model able to predict the spread of these diseases after such disasters.
My research, mainly the PhD, aims to first quantify the impacts of floods and tropical storms on infectious diseases (especially those that are vector-borne) and to potentially establish lag-times between the events and the diseases. Eventually, we aim to create a model which would be able to predict the spread of relevant diseases in vulnerable coastal communities.
I am really interested in what are the relevant factors contributing to the vulnerability to the spread of certain diseases in the aftermath of hydro-metereological disasters. I am also fascinated by the fact that the spread of said diseases can, potentially, be predicted before the event happens and turns into a disaster, thus helping resource-prioritization.
Creating a model that could successfully predict the spread of a disease, would potentially enable us to better direct the scarce resources into prevention and during the response of epidemics, thus saving resources and lives. My PhD serves only as a starting ground with a limited amount of diseases and locations, but hopefully in the future this knowledge could be used to build better models which would encompass a more diseases and locations, making disaster response more accurate.