Developing an agent-based model for simulating the dynamic spread of Plasmodium vivax malaria: A case study of Sarbaz, Iran

Abstract Malaria is a vector-borne disease that is considered a major public health problem in tropical and semi-tropical areas. The transmission of malaria is associated with the interactions among environment, Anopheles mosquitoes (vectors), and humans (hosts). Plasmodium vivax is one of the four species of malaria parasites that commonly infect humans in Asia, Latin America, and in some parts of Africa. The major difference between this and other parasites is the recurrence of malaria. The main objective of this study is to develop an agent-based model (ABM) for simulating the dynamic spread of P. vivax malaria, based on the interactions of these three elements represented as agents. The SEIRS model is used to simulate the transmission of malaria. The model explanation follows the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, Details) protocol. The transmission of malaria depends on various factors consisting of temperature, humidity, vegetation, altitude, distance from rivers, and the human population density. The main innovation of this study is that the first three factors are assumed changeable and are entered dynamically to the model during the simulation process. In the study area, the malaria occurrence data were available only for each month and only at the county level. Therefore, the processes of calibration and validation of the model were merely based on the temporal pattern of malaria incidence and the Root-Mean-Square-Error (RMSE). After the calibration of the model, the best value of RMSE calculated for the temporal pattern of malaria spread was 3.155 infected people. The map of critical locations of malaria spreading resulted from this research can be helpful to the policymakers to plan the malaria-control interventions.