Evaluating Disease Risk Under Climate Change Using GIS, Remotely Sensed Data and Mathematical Modeling – A Case Study of Lyme Disease in Ontario, Canada
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Date
12 Dec 2025
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Organiser
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI) & Research Institute for Land and Space (RILS)
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Time
11:00 - 12:00
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Venue
Z207 Map
Speaker
Prof. Dongmei CHEN
Remarks
Prof. Xintao LIU, Associate Professor, LSGI, member of RILS
Summary
Climate change has a significant impact on the risk of vector-borne infectious diseases by altering environmental conditions that influence the spread of pathogens and their vectors. These changes create new challenges for public health systems and increase the frequency, distribution, and intensity of disease outbreaks. This presentation will use Lyme disease, an emerging infectious disease in Canada, as an example to illustrate how remote-sensed data and GIS tools have been used to monitor environmental factors that can affect the habitat of disease vectors and their hosts in Eastern Ontario. By incorporating epidemiological modeling, remote sensing, and GIS, we can better understand how environmental and climatic changes influence disease spread and support climate change adaptation strategies.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Dongmei CHEN
Professor
Department of Geography and Planning
Queen’s University, Canada
Prof. Dongmei CHEN is a full professor at the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s. Dr. CHEN’s research interests focus on developing methods and technologies to understand spatial and temporal patterns, detect changes, and identify relationships from large GIS datasets, satellite, and UAV images for environmental, ecological, and health applications at local to regional scales. She has led and participated in more than 40 research projects supported by different funding agencies, governmental departments, and private industry. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings, and is recognized as one of the top 2% most cited scientists by Stanford University. She is the recipient of the 2024 Award for Scholarly Distinction in Geography from CAG and has served as the director of CSRS since 2022.
