Google and OFF! team up to create OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast tool

Mosquitos remain one of the biggest threats to the health of humans. With this, Google and SC Johnson’s OFF! decided to team up to build the OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast tool that can give predictions about mosquito outbreaks. It was launched on Google Cloud across the United States on May 5th and will soon be available to other markets, such as Brazil and Mexico.

According to a study, mosquitoes infect over 700 million people yearly across the globe with different diseases like Zika, Malaria, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever. While completely eradicating the problems is almost impossible due to the unceasing presence of the said insects everywhere, prevention of the said diseases is possible. OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast will guide people in understanding their population in a specific location. 

“With the OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast, anyone can get their local mosquito prediction as easily as a daily weather update,” says Giusy Buonfantino, Vice President, Consumer Packaged Goods, Google Cloud. “Powered by Google Cloud’s geospatial and data analytics technologies, OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast is the world’s first public technology platform that predicts and shares mosquito abundance information. By applying data that is informed by the science of mosquito biology, OFF!Cast accurately predicts mosquito behavior and mosquito populations in specific geographical locations.”

The tool is modeled after the interface of the popular weather apps, making the data comprehensible for everyone. In addition, the model combines three inputs (mosquito’s lifecycle, climate data, and mosquito population counts from more than 5,000 locations) provided by VectorBase, an organization collecting and counting mosquitoes to provide reliable and useful data for the research community.

The forecast can be accessed via Google Cloud either on a desktop or mobile device. Users need to submit their ZIP codes and OFF!Cast Mosquito Forecast will provide a seven-day mosquito forecast for the local area of the respective code. Anyone using the tool will also be offered an option to receive a weekly forecast by signing up.