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■Bio-mathematics, Statistics and Nano-Technologies: Mosquito Control Strategies

Develop and Plan Control Strategies for Each Type of Production Zone:

• Analyze each zone individually to determine which control strategy will provide the

most sound and effective control – prevention, larvicide or adulticide controls.

• Plan ground treatment routes that are based on providing service to the citizens of

the community while incorporating mosquito hot spots.

Precautions:

KEEP THE PUBLIC INFORMED about mosquito control operations. Whenever possible,

notify the public of the date and time of applications before any applications for larval

or adult mosquito control are made. In the case of applications directed to control adult

mosquitos, individuals with severe allergy conditions and persons with asthmatic prob-

lems may wish to stay indoors or plan to be away from the community during the treatment

hours. Car finishes may be spotted with certain adulticidal insecticide sprays, and owners

may wish to house them in the garage during the treatment hours. The understanding and

cooperation of the general public is necessary if the program is to be successful.

We agree with all of these recommendations. Note that in the applications of our con-

vexity techniques in [2] we dealt with the problem of finding ground access routes in

different scenarios (snow-removal, solid waste pick-up, etc.). These can be applied to the

ground treatment routes mentioned above.

We advocate following a model similar to the one used by Delaware when designing

mosquito control districts. This model meets the requirements listed above and deals with

the problem of covering all potential flight paths, a convex set. Tarrant County and North-

Richland Hills in Texas, the USA, use a similar method, just not with ArcGIS [8]. But as

is clear from the first examples in this paper, not every locale may follow this conclusion.

In that case we recommend that each mosquito abatement district is at a minimum nearly

convex. We would actually suggest a stronger version, with CR(D) > 0.6. This was true

of most of the districts in our plan for Texas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is partly based on work performed within the framework of IMAAC

(https://imaac.eu/) related to COST Action CA16227 (Investigation & Mathe-

matical Analysis of Avant-garde Disease Control via Mosquito Nano-Tech-Repellents,

https://cost.eu/actions/CA16227/), supported by COST Association (Euro-

pean Cooperation in Science and Technology). The study was performed by the author

James R. Bozeman at The American University of Malta (AUM), who is thankful for its

support.

GLOSSARY

Mosquito Abatement Region: An area in which spraying or fogging or ground place-

ment of insecticides occur, e.g. [7].