Incidence prediction of communicable diseases after the Wenchuan earthquake using remote sensing

Wenchuan in Sichuan Province, China, was hit by an 8.0 magnitude earthquake on 12 May 2008. Thousands of buildings were destroyed and thousands of people were hurt. History tells us that after earthquakes, floods and other natural disaster, infectious diseases often outbreaks. In this study, with the help of spatial information technologies including remote sensing and geography information system, we acquired environmental factors including population, earthquake intensity, route distance, direct distance, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Water Index, and Digital Elevation Model for each township in Anxian after earthquake. Then we constructed a Back Propagation Neural Network to train environmental factors and incidence of communicable diseases, and predicted the incidence of communicable diseases. The results showed that incidence of communicable diseases after earthquake could be predicted using remote sensing to some extent.