Outbreak Modeling

Global study links human disease outbreaks to land use, climate and biodiversity change

Researchers analyzed geolocated outbreak data for 32 environmentally linked emerging infectious diseases, combining these with global datasets on socio-environmental factors such as land use, climate and biodiversity. Using disease-specific driver hypotheses developed with experts across virology, ecology and public health, they built geospatial statistical models to identify common human-caused patterns behind where outbreaks occur.

nature.com · 2026-09-23

Delphy speeds up Bayesian phylogenetics for real-time outbreak tracking

Researchers describe Delphy, a phylogenetics tool that encodes evolutionary trees as timed nodes carrying explicit mutation and 'missation' (missing-data) annotations relative to a reference sequence. This design lets the software efficiently reconstruct full sequences at any tree point and handle uncertain tip collection dates, aiming to make Bayesian phylogenetic analysis fast enough for near-real-time outbreak response.

nature.com · 2026-09-16