Environment-based strategy for monitoring early colonization of Lutzomyia longipalpis at the city scale
Surveillance
Remote sensing
Species distribution models
Vector-borne diseases
Risk mapping
2026
Verónica Andreo
Researcher & Lecturer
CONICET · Instituto Gulich – CONAE/UNC · Córdoba, Argentina
My research asks a simple question with a difficult answer: where and when do environmental conditions converge to make a disease outbreak likely? I look for the answer in satellite data — and in the ecology of the species that carry the pathogens.
I am a biologist, and I work with Earth observation in all its forms — optical, thermal and radar imagery, dense satellite time series, and the environmental indicators built from them — combining it with spatio-temporal statistics and machine learning to model where species live, how their populations shift through the year, and how that turns into forecasts and risk maps, early enough for them to be useful.
That work runs on open source tools, and part of my time goes back into them. I am part of the GRASS development team and have chaired its Project Steering Committee since 2021, I teach GRASS and geospatial courses regularly, and I am an active member of OSGeo and the FOSS4G community.
Interests
What I study
- Ecology of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases
- Species distributions and population dynamics
- Environmental drivers of outbreak risk
Data I work with
- Satellite image time series
- Optical, thermal and radar Earth observation
- Climate and environmental variables
How I work
- Spatio-temporal modeling
- Machine learning and species distribution models
- Risk mapping and forecasting
- Open source geospatial software
Skills
Remote sensing
Geospatial analysis
Modeling
Data science
Coding
Scientific writing
Recent publications
No matching items
Experience
Associate Researcher
Research Scholar
GGA – North Carolina State University
Assistant Researcher
Postdoc Researcher
GIS technician
Contact
Instituto Gulich, Ruta Provincial C45 Km 8, Falda del Cañete, Córdoba (5187), Argentina
Mon to Fri, 08:30 to 16:30