Towards site-specific daily NATURe foreCASTS for society: a case study for ticks and Lyme disease

People in the Netherlands are interested in nature. A clear sign of that interest is that over 100,000 volunteers report over six million observations of plants and animals per year. These observations can be combined with existing geographic information to create site-specific daily forecasts of nature events. In this project, we will create an integrated geospatial infrastructure to support the construction of such forecasts. We will also investigate how forecast maps should be presented in a user-friendly way to various user groups and using various communication channels: website, app, newsletter, and (social) media.Ticks bite risk and tick activity models will be used to illustrate our work. Ticks are a serious public health problem because they carry diseases such as Lyme Borreliosis. Only n the Netherlands over 20,000 citizens are diagnosed with Lyme each year.