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Abstract
On 12 May 2008, Wenchuan Earthquake, magnitude 8.0, destroyed thousands of buildings, and resulted in thousands of people being buried in the collapsed buildings. In order to investigate the potential epidemic disease risk after earthquake, a Backward Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) was constructed to assess the potential epidemic risks by applying remote sensing technology to obtain Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) values, as well as by using a geographic information system (GIS) to gain ambient epidemic-related spatial factors over the earthquake region. In this study, a relationship was established between the change in environmental factors after earthquake and potential epidemic risks, which was found to be statistically significant. The result might be explained for three change perspectives, namely environmental risks, medical risks and psychological risks. The corresponding strategies for preparedness in case of epidemic disease were given.
Acknowledgments
This paper has been supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 40871173); Key Science and Technology R&D program of Qinghai Province (grant no. 2006-6-160-01); Special Grant For Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (2008ZX10004-012); the National State Key Basic Research Project (grant no. 2007CB714404). Thanks to CRESDA for providing the paper with the CBERS-02b data. The authors also wish to thank all people that have given help to the paper. We are grateful to Professor Ramesh P. Singh for his fruitful suggestions in improving the language of the paper.
