Description of Session
This session will explore a satellite enumeration and ground-truthing exercise that took place in a remote part of Ethiopia under the USAID President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) VectorLink project. The goal of this activity was to find out how many eligible structures existed in a specific region of Ethiopia to ensure accurate availability of insecticide for an Indoor Residual Spray (IRS) campaign. Abt Associates partnered with Digital Globe to produce satellite enumerated maps of Gambela Region, Ethiopia, which produced 192,491 building footprints. These building footprints were then built into Fulcrum, a mobile data collection platform, and turned into data collection points on a map. Using tablets, teams of local enumerators were sent to all 192,491 buildings to tag structures as eligible for IRS or ineligible, based on Ethiopia’s eligibility criteria. Once a structure was tagged as eligible or ineligible, further data was collected on the type of structure that was found. By the end of the exercise, a complete map of the area was formed detailing where structures exist and what type of structure each point represented. This presentation will describe how satellite enumeration was completed, the accuracy and limitations of satellite enumeration, and how the results were used to guide programmatic decision making in Ethiopia. This presentation will also explore additional use-case possibilities within Ethiopia, such as using the enumeration results to create precise sampling intervals for health surveys in Gambela Region or aid in the planning of door-to-door vaccination campaigns.
