SAN DIEGO — Scientists at UC San Diego this week revealed a new platform intended to translate data-driven academic disease forecasting into practical recommendations for politicians and other policymakers.
UCSD’s School of Global Policy and Strategy was behind the new concept — the Disease Incidence and Resource Estimator. DIRE is an interactive map that uses analytics to predict where dengue fever and malaria outbreaks are likely to occur in Brazil and Peru, and the types of health resources that may be needed to control and treat them, according to a statement from the university.
“This project is about getting academic breakthroughs off the shelf and into the hands of the people making decisions,” said Gordon McCord, associate teaching professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy. “We took machine-learning models that predict dengue and turned them into something governments can actually use — so they can plan ahead and act before cases spike.”
McCord’s past research includes studying how weather and environmental conditions shape the spread of infectious disease and “translating disease risk into financing estimates and other practical inputs that public health systems need,” the UCSD statement reads.
DIRE allows users to view specific locations, past reported cases, and projections for the current month and the next two months, and to flag places where predictions are less certain.
“It not only tells you how many cases of the disease are coming,” McCord said. “There’s a model underneath it that’s telling you how many resources would be needed in that place next month — how many doses of vaccine and what those costs would be, how many fumigation kits — It’s trying to do as much of the government’s job for it as possible.”
According to the researchers, dengue is becoming a bigger challenge in many parts of the world as climate change, land-use change, deforestation and travel and emigration can increase human exposure to the mosquito-borne disease.
Malaria remains a persistent threat in parts of Peru and Brazil and many other places in the world. McCord linked ecological change, such as deforestation and disease risk, to the role that weather-related factors, such as rain and flooding, can play in expanding mosquito breeding areas.
“Climate-related outbreaks like dengue and malaria are becoming more frequent and dangerous in Peru, especially for children and pregnant women,” said Carlos Orlando Zegarra Zamalloa, a health specialist at the UNICEF Peru office. “In 2025 alone, Peru reported 39,000 dengue cases, with a substantial proportion of affected children; the scale has been overwhelming the current capacity of governments and communities to respond effectively.”
DIRE is funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust, a UK-based global health philanthropy, to develop the platform with New Light Technologies and in collaboration with UNICEF.
“We brought together stakeholders and asked what would be a useful product,” McCord said. “We showed lots of iterations to Peruvian CDC officials, Brazil’s dengue program and UNICEF teams in Peru and beyond; the idea was to be very proactive in getting the opinion of people who we hoped would use this.”
DIRE is currently in a soft launch phase. McCord and his team said the initial two countries and two diseases are a starting point — a proof of concept for a platform that could expand to additional regions and health threats.
“Ultimately, success looks like governments being able to act earlier,” McCord said. “If you can see what’s likely coming — and what resources you’ll need — you can move from reacting to outbreaks to preparing for them.”
