On 25-30 May in Xi’An, China, the 9th International Forum on the Surveillance and Control of Mosquitoes and Mosquito-borne Diseases took place under the responsibility and coordination of the Entomological Society of China (ESC).
Spiros Mourelatos was invited as a keynote speaker at this Forum, and made a presentation on “The use of Big Data and AI technologies in mosquito control in Europe”.
This Forum was attended by 300 participants, the vast majority of them from China and neighbouring countries, and a total of 40 presentations were given. From Europe, in addition to Spiros Mourelatos, Dr Florence Fouque from the World Health Organization/Tropical Disease Research (WHO/TDR) and Dr Gerard Duvallet, Professor Emeritus of Paul-Valery University of Montpellier, participated with presentations, and from the United States the official speakers were the two former Presidents of the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA) Dr Ary Faraji and Dr Rui-De Xue from Utah and Florida respectively.
The main conclusion that emerged from Mr Mourelatos’s participation in this Forum is that while China is leading the way in all areas, especially in new technologies and even in biotechnology recently, it still lacks collective mosquito control projects characterized by correspondingly advanced data collection and analytics technologies.
