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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Parasitology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1487222
This article is part of the Research Topic One Health Approaches and Modelling in Parasitology in the Climate Change Framework and Possible Supporting Tools Adopting GIS and Remote Sensing View all 3 articles

Spatial prediction of the probability of liver fluke infection in water resource within sub-basin using an optimized geographically-weighted regression (GWR) model

Provisionally accepted
Benjamabhorn Pumhirunroj Benjamabhorn Pumhirunroj 1,2Patiwat Littidej Patiwat Littidej 3*Thidarut Boonmars Thidarut Boonmars 4Atchara Artchayasawat Atchara Artchayasawat 5Nutchanat Buasri Nutchanat Buasri 6Donald Slack Donald Slack 7
  • 1 Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, Sakon Nakhon, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand
  • 2 Program in Animal Science, Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, Sakon Nakhon 47000, Thailand; benjamabhorn@snru.ac.th, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand
  • 3 Mahasarakham University, Mueang Maha Sarakham District, Thailand
  • 4 Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand; bthida@kku.ac.th, Khon Kaen, Thailand
  • 5 Faculty of Natural Resources and Agro-Industry, Kasetsart University, Chalermphrakiat Sakon Nakhon Province Campus, Sakon Nakhon 47000, Thailand; atchara.ar@ku.th, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand
  • 6 Geoinformatics Research Unit for Spatial Management, Department of Geoinformatics, Faculty of Informatics, Mahasarakham University, Maha Sarakham 44150, Thailand; naruset.p@msu.ac.th (N.P.);, Mahasarakham, Thailand
  • 7 Department of Civil & Architectural Engineering & Mechanics, University of Arizona, 1209 E. Second St., P.O. Box 210072, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA; slackd@arizona.edu, Arizona, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Infection with liver flukes (Opisthorchis viverrini) is partly attributed to their ability to thrive in subbasin habitats, causing the intermediate host to remain within the watershed system throughout the year. It is crucial to conduct spatial monitoring of fluke infection at a small basin analysis scale as it helps in studying the spatial factors influencing these infections. The number of infected individuals was obtained from local authorities, converted into a percentage, and visually represented as raster data through a heat map. This approach generates continuous data with dependent variables. The independent set comprises nine variables, including both vector and raster data, that establish a connection between the location of an infected person and their village. The Model-3 demonstrated the strongest correlation between the variables X5 (stream) and X7 (ndmi), which are associated with the percentage of infected individuals. The statistical analysis showed t-statistics values of -2.045 and 0.784, with corresponding p-values of 0.016 and 0.085. The RMSE was determined to be 2.571%, and the AUC was 0.659, providing support for these findings. Several alternative models were tested, and a generalized mathematical model was developed to incorporate the independent variables. This new model improved the accuracy of the GWR model by 5.75% and increased the R 2 value from 0.754 to 0.800. Additionally, spatial autocorrelation confirmed the difference in predictions between the modeled and actual infection values. This study demonstrates that when using GWR to create spatial models at the sub-basin level, it is possible to identify variables that are associated with liver fluke infection.

    Keywords: liver fluke, Opisthorchis viverrine (OV), spatial modeling, geographically weighted regression (GWR), Sakon Nakhon, Thailand, Connection Mekong River

    Received: 27 Aug 2024; Accepted: 21 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pumhirunroj, Littidej, Boonmars, Artchayasawat, Buasri and Slack. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Patiwat Littidej, Mahasarakham University, Mueang Maha Sarakham District, Thailand

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