Developing the Object-Oriented Dynamic Mosquito Simulation Model (DYMSIM)

Projected changes in climate pose a variety of potentially harmful outcomes for the current Earth system, including the rates of vector-borne infectious diseases. The Dynamic Mosquito Simulation Model (DyMSiM) was previously developed to model and predict the rates of mosquito-borne infectious diseases based on precipitation and temperature data. Based in Stella, a development software program, the model’s current setup limits functionality and speed whereas an object-oriented version of the DyMSiM software was identified as potentially alleviating those constraints. The conversion into an object-oriented model offered the freedom of access to users, customizability, and more specific outputs among other features. Java was used in programming the model, which consisted of six different classes: Model, Container, EggBatch, LarvaeBatch, PupaeBatch, and Adult. The Java model code enabled climate data (precipitation and temperature) to be entered via an Excel spreadsheet. The egg, larval, and pupal stages of the mosquito lifecycle were treated as “batches” in which a cohort of multiple simulated developing mosquitoes go through the same process together. This method was not used, however, for the Adult stage of the mosquito, as Adults were instantiated as their own respective objects in the model. The model was validated against the Stella version using example data from San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2010 and 2011. Resulting model outputs of infectious mosquitoes were found to be within an order of magnitude as the Stella model. The development of this object-oriented model has created the foundation upon which many new specifications and additional features to the model can be made to enhance the study of mosquito-borne diseases around the world