ITS Students Develop AERIS to Identify Dengue Risk Areas

Through this innovation, we are striving to shift the approach from responsive to preventive, stated Rifqi Pangestu Wiguna, Lead Developer of the AERIS team, in Surabaya, East Java, on Tuesday.

Students from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) have developed the Aedes Aegypti Environmental Risk System (AERIS), which utilises Web Geographic Information System (WebGIS) and machine learning to identify high-risk areas for Dengue Fever (DBD) in the city of Surabaya.

Rifqi explained that the system predicts five sub-districts in Surabaya as high-risk zones for Dengue Fever in 2026, namely Tambaksari, Rungkut, Tandes, Sawahan, and Semampir.

This prediction was obtained by processing Dengue Fever case data from the Surabaya City Health Office for the 2019–2024 period, combined with various variables including rainfall, topography, population density, the distribution of stagnant water points, and six other factors.

According to him, the more relevant factors integrated into the model, the better AERIS’s ability to predict Dengue risk. This combination of variables allows the system to present risk information as a support for data-driven decision-making, said the 2023 cohort student.

The analysis results show that Dengue risk is concentrated in areas with high population density, while the presence of stagnant water remains one of the most influential factors in the predictive model. Therefore, the management of stagnant water and the eradication of mosquito breeding sites remain relevant steps, said Rifqi.

The reliability of the model was also tested using actual Dengue case data from March 202<0xC2>5, which was not included in the training process. The results showed that the model was able to accurately identify nine out of ten sub-districts with the highest Dengue cases.

In addition to generating risk predictions, AERIS presents information in the form of an interactive WebGIS-based map that can be accessed via the aeris.geowebgis.id website. The platform displays visualisations of Dengue case distribution, rainfall, health facilities, and disease risk predictions at the sub-district level.

“We hope AERIS becomes one of the data-driven decision-making support tools,” he added.

The development of AERIS aligns with the commitment of ITS to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 3 regarding good health and well-being, and Goal 11 regarding sustainable cities and communities.