I am mainly focused on constructing future change scenarios for the Netherlands. These will include climate, land-use, agricultural practices, livestock numbers, water management, human demographics and the transport of vectors and hosts both into and within the Netherlands. These scenarios will account for a range of possible changes, such as social and economic growth, governmental priorities and international cooperation. To create these scenarios, I am downscaling internationally recognised global scenarios (the Shared Socio-economic Pathways) to make them relevant for the Dutch context, using a combination of expert consultation, modelling and existing Dutch scenarios. In October 2021 we organised a workshop with experts from a wide range of sectors and organisations to help us develop our scenarios.

The other part of my work relates to species distribution modelling. I am involved in constructing models to predict the distribution and abundance of both mosquitoes and birds across the Netherlands. These will be used to estimate how these populations could change in the future.

Each of the scenario elements will have some influence on the risk of vector-borne virus outbreaks, for example through changing mosquito populations, the chance of virus introduction and the speed at which a virus could spread once it’s introduced. By combining the scenarios, the predicted mosquito and bird populations and the epidemiological model developed in PhD track 9, I will be able to predict the future risk of vector-borne virus outbreaks under each scenario.