Spatio-temporal analysis of fox rabies cases in Germany 2005-2006

Abstract

Aiming to achieve new insights into rabies dynamics, this paper is the first to investigate fox rabies in Germany from a space-time pattern perspective. Based on a locally restricted dataset covering a fourteen month period, our findings indicate a strongly aggregated spatiotemporal point pattern resulting from an inhomogeneous stochastic process. In contrast to spatial or temporal approaches or cellular automata, our analysis focuses on the disease dynamics in time and space in a continuous time domain. Our findings confirm existing theories regarding fox rabies control highlighting the potential risk of urban areas and the need for effective rabies vaccination.

Keywords

• Spatio-temporal point data
• Spatio-temporal disease pattern
• Clustered process
• Germany