Mosquito Tracking System Case Study

Mosquito Tracking System Case Study
Introduction
Soaring mosquito populations can cause serious problems in tropical regions as the
mosquitos can transmit diseases. Combatting mosquito populations in remote regions can
be challenging, as the sources can be difficult to detect and blanket treatment of entire
regions is prohibitively expensive. Hence, communities need to work together to identify
sources and take appropriate action to eradicate the insects. A system that helps facilitate
community-driven identification and targeted treatment of sources is desired. Henceforth
this system will be called the Mosquito Tracking System (MTS).
Anyone shall be able to participate in the identification of possible mosquito breeding sites
by reporting information about locations they may have discovered to the MTS. Since
community participation is critical for this endeavour, the system must be designed to
maximise ease of use by a wide range of people with a variety of technological literacy and
education.
Users shall be able to use their smartphone to conveniently identify sites by taking a picture
on their smartphone, add notes, and submit this geo-tagged information to the MTS.
Alternatively, locations can be submitted via a desktop computer by entering the address of
the site, notes, and attach photos (if any). Users shall be able to view the sites (but not the
details) of reports submitted in their vicinity.
Reports shall be collated on a daily basis and trends analysed to forecast likely spikes in
mosquito populations in different areas so that appropriate eradication programs and
preventative treatment actions can be taken. The statistics and trends for each region in the
entire country shall also be reported to the central Health Authority who combine this
information with frequencies of mosquito-borne diseases and historical models to estimate
the probability of disease outbreaks in each area on a monthly basis.
For each area, an area coordinator is appointed who monitors the reported and forecast
mosquito populations in their area. Area coordinators can decide to schedule treatment
actions, which are carried out by a workers drawn from a pool of volunteers and
professional pest controllers in the area. Volunteers and Professionals can register with the
MTS at any time. During registration the area(s) the worker can operate, their availability
(days and time), and their qualifications are captured.
The MTS will assist area coordinators to devise a suitable treatment plan for an area and
monitor its execution by workers. A treatment plan covers the significant sites in an area
and assigns suitable treatment actions for each site over a period of time. Different
treatment actions will be required depending on the type of site, exposure to the elements,
the season, and availability of suitably qualified workers in the area. Some treatments
require chemicals and tools that are restricted to use by professionals, while other actions,
such as emptying pools of water or adding a few drops of oil, can be carried out by anyone.
Selection of treatment actions and assignment of workers to sites should be automated as
much as possible, with area coordinators having the opportunity to review and amend the
system-generated plans.
Suitably qualified workers are assigned to carry out (part of) a treatment plan at scheduled
times. The MTS must ensure that the worker’s skills and availability matches the treatment
actions and timeline set out in the treatment plan. For efficiency, schedules shall be
constructed to minimise travel time and maximise use of equipment carried by each worker.
The MTS shall be able to assist workers in preparing for their assignments by providing
equipment lists, direct workers to each individual site, show photos (if available), and
provide step by step instructions while they perform the tasks on site. Equipment lists,
directions and waypoints, schedule, and instructions shall be available electronically (e.g. on
a workers’ mobile phone) and in printed form to cater for regions with poor wireless
network availability. Once a worker has completed treating a site, the worker marks the
task as completed in the MTS.
Ideas for other future improvements have already been identified; however, due to
budgetary and time constraints these cannot be accommodated in the initial design and
development of the system.
• The authorities are confident that if the MTS proves to be successful, similar
community-based eradication efforts can be rolled out to address other issues, for
example pests, rodents, fruit fly infestations, etc. It is envisioned that the MTS would
be extended to cater for these problems at a later time.
• The classification of site type (indoors vs outdoors, still water vs moving water,
domestic vs natural environment, mosquito vs rodent vs fruit fly etc) based on
uploaded photos shall eventually be automated using Artificial Intelligence image
processing techniques.
• The forecasting and treatment planning could be improved by incorporating precise
weather forecasts for each region.
• Data mining techniques should be applied to eventually discover the effectiveness of
treatment actions in different areas.
• Government officials are likely to require information about treatment costs and
chemicals disseminated into the environment; for each treatment plan, this
information shall eventually be transferred to the government department’s ERP
system each month.
Overall, the system will serve a population of ca. 200 million, 1% of which can be assumed
to use the MTS to submit reports (anonymously). There are 10-300 workers (volunteers and
professional) in each area. The landmass served by the system spans a total 20 million km2,
much of which is in rural areas with poor or no mobile internet access. Overall, this area is
broken down into 200 (disjoint) areas of varying extent that are relevant for the MTS.
The MTS system shall be available 99% of the time. At peak times (7-9am and 4-7pm) the
system must be able to handle no less than 100 submissions per minute per area.
Scope
Included
• System architecture design for the overall system
• User-facing system elements, core application components, data storage
architecture, user management
• Build vs buy decisions
• Interfaces to external and externally sourced systems
• Deployment design
Excluded
• User interface design
• Database schema design
• User support services, helpdesk
• Administration of the operational system
• Worker payment
• Resource planning & delivery
Use Cases
For purposes of this assignment restrict your attention to the following use cases (this list is
certainly incomplete):

Domain Model
-address
-GPScoordinates
-size
MosquitoSite
-reportedDate
-notes
SiteReport
TreatmentPlan
-scheduledDate
-status
TreatmentAction
-label
Skill -identifier
-name
-datesAvailable
Worker
Professional Volunteer
Photo
-estimatedPopulation
-numberOfReports
-date
MosquitoTrendReport
-label
Area
-identifier
-name
AreaCoordinator
-name
-description
EquipmentType
GeoFence
WorkerType
-quantity
EquipmentRequirement

1 1
1
0..*
1
0..*
0..* 1
1 1
0..* 1
1
1..*
1 0..*
0..*
0..*
1
0..*
1..*
0..* 0..*
0..*
0..*
1..*
0..*
1
1..*
1..* 0..*
characterises
created for
operates in
describes
creates
defined by
responsible for
located in
includes
describes
requires
requires
posesses
assigned to
affects
Constraints
• The client-facing application shall function correctly on devices and operating
systems that were current as of 2015 and later.
• GPS units that may be available on some devices shall be used to pinpoint the
location of a site.
• Users shall be able to enter reports while disconnected from networks. Pending
reports shall be submitted to the MTS once the device can connect to a network.
• User authentication and authorization for workers and area coordinators shall be
conducted by the government department’s MS Active Directory based user
management system.
• The first version of the system shall be operational for public use within 12 months.
The budget is constrained to 5 FTE person years for design and development of the
system (not including costs for software components bought from commercial
vendors and costs associated with the continued operation of the deployed system).
• The Central Health Authorities has been accepting data in CSV format. Write-only
access to their Oracle 12 database management system may be negotiated if
needed.