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Modern Geomatics Technologies and Applications

As shown in Fig.4, the results of the model (i.e., predicted values) approximately well followed the actual observed value.
In other words, although the predicted value is sometimes higher and sometimes lower than the actual observed value, the trend
of model’s prediction is so similar to the trend of actual data that indicates the potential of our ABM in simulating the spread of
malaria.

4. Conclusions
Malaria, as a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, is highly dependent on environmental circumstances. In this research, to
simulate the spread of malaria, an agent-based model was developed using the SEIRS epidemic model. Besides, effective
environmental factors affecting malaria spreading were considered in the model. Despite previous research, not only malaria-
transmission probability was considered changeable, but also it was calculated based on several environmental factors including
air temperature, relative humidity, land vegetation, altitude, and distance from water sources. On that basis, the malaria-
transmission probability was considered different from one cell to another. Besides, in this research, the first three factors were
considered variable during the simulation. Variable consideration of factors, as the main innovation of this research, causes the
malaria-transmission probability different during the simulation.
The calibration and validation of the model were performed based on the RMSE value as well as the temporal pattern of
malaria spreading in the study area. Besides, due to randomly adjusting some parameters as well as in order to reduce any errors
caused by different random sources, the proposed ABM was executed 100 times for each change in the values of unknown
parameters. After model calibration, the best value calculated for RMSE was 6.853 infected people.
The results of this research indicated the high potential of ABM in simulating the spread of malaria. Simulation of disease
spreading given by considering environmental circumstances provides valuable and more accurate information that can assist
health policymakers in predicting the spread of disease in the study area for subsequent years.

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