Interpretable machine learning approach to analyze the effects of landscape and meteorological factors on mosquito occurrences in Seoul, South Korea

Mosquitoes are the underlying cause of various public health and economic problems. In this study, patterns of mosquito occurrence were analyzed based on landscape and meteorological factors in the metropolitan city of Seoul. We evaluated the influence of environmental factors on mosquito occurrence through the interpretation of prediction models with a machine learning algorithm. Through hierarchical cluster analysis, the study areas were classified into waterside and non-waterside areas, according to the landscape patterns. The mosquito occurrence was higher in the waterside area, and mosquito abundance was negatively affected by rainfall at the waterside. The mosquito occurrence was predicted in each cluster area based on the landscape and cumulative meteorological variables using a random forest algorithm. Both models exhibited good performance (both accuracy and AUROC > 0.8) in predicting the level of mosquito occurrence. The embedded relationship between the mosquito occurrence and the environmental factors in the models was explained using the Shapley additive explanation method. According to the variable importance and the partial dependence plots for each model, the waterside area was more influenced by the meteorological and land cover variables than the non-waterside area. Therefore, mosquito control strategies should consider the effects of landscape and meteorological conditions, including the temperature, rainfall, and the landscape heterogeneity. The present findings can contribute to the development of mosquito forecasting systems in metropolitan cities for the promotion of public health. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-22099-5.