Principal Component Analysis to Explore Climatic Variability and Dengue Outbreak in Lahore

Abstract

Various studies have reported that global warming causes unstable climate and many serious impact to physical environment and public health. The increasing incidence of dengue incidence is now a priority health issue and become a health burden of Pakistan.  In this study it has been investigated that spatial pattern of environment causes the emergence or increasing rate of dengue fever incidence that effects the population and its health. Principal component analysis is performed for the purpose of finding if there is/are any general environmental factor/structure which could be affected in the emergence of dengue fever cases in Pakistani climate. Principal component is applied to find structure in data for all four periods i.e. 1980 to 2012, 1980 to 1995 and 1996 to 2012.  The first three PCs for the period (1980-2012, 1980-1994, 1995-2012 are almost the same and it represent hot and windy weather. The PC1s of all dengue periods are different to each other. PC2 for all period are same and it is wetness in weather. PC3s are different and it is the combination of wetness and windy weather. PC4s for all period show humid but no rain in weather. For climatic variable only minimum temperature and maximum temperature are significantly correlated with daily dengue cases.  PC1, PC3 and PC4 are highly significantly correlated with daily dengue cases