Objectives of the service
Municipalities across Europe manage tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) populations breeding in road drains, but cannot justify installing physical barriers in every drain across networks that often number in the tens of thousands. The default approach, chemical larvicide treatment, must be reapplied every 7–14 days, protects fewer than 60% of drains at any given time, and faces growing regulatory pressure under EU pesticide-reduction targets.
This ESA Kick-Start developed a satellite-based modelling service that identifies the small share of drains driving most mosquito breeding, so that ZikaSeal's physical barrier is installed only where it is needed. The service combines Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Earth Observation data with machine learning trained on real entomological trap data, producing an annually updated, drain-level risk map delivered through a browser dashboard. Municipalities use the output to plan barrier deployment, budget mosquito-control programmes, and track whether risk has shifted from year to year, replacing blanket chemical treatment with a targeted, evidence-based, pesticide-free strategy
Users and their needs
The service targets environmental health officers and mosquito-control coordinators in European municipalities with tiger-mosquito-affected drain networks, and the procurement departments that pay for the service. The project engaged two pilot cities representing distinct operational contexts: Monaco, a Mediterranean city with no formalised control programme, and Graz, Austria, a Central European city with an established chemical-control and entomological-surveillance programme.
User needs identified were:
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A control method that does not require repeated chemical application throughout the season
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Reliable identification of which drains are the highest-risk breeding sites, so interventions can be targeted rather than applied uniformly
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An annually updated risk assessment confirming whether previously controlled areas remain safe or whether new hotspots have emerged
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Outputs compatible with existing municipal GIS systems, usable without specialist remote-sensing expertise
Service/ system concept
The ZikaSeal hotspot-modelling service delivers an annual, drain-level risk map that tells a municipality which of its road drains are priority mosquito-breeding sites. Users access results through a browser dashboard showing a city-level risk indicator, drain-by-drain classification, year-on-year trend comparison, and a downloadable GIS export (GeoTIFF, GeoJSON, shapefile) compatible with standard municipal GIS software.
The pipeline runs in four stages. Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 optical imagery, together with Copernicus climate data, are retrieved automatically for the city of interest. Spectral indices describing surface water, vegetation, moisture and built-up density are calculated for each drain location. A machine-learning model, trained on real mosquito trap data from EID Méditerranée and constrained by the mosquito's known ~150 m flight range, converts these indices into a per-drain risk score and classifies the top hotspots. Results are
rendered as an interactive map and an annual PDF report, refreshed each year so municipalities can see whether risk has shifted due to urban development or climate change.
Space Added Value
The service relies entirely on freely available European satellite data: Sentinel-1 radar, which penetrates cloud cover, Sentinel-2 optical imagery, and Copernicus Climate Data Store variables (rainfall, temperature, humidity). No commercial or proprietary EO data acquisition is required, keeping the service cost structure lean and scalable to any European city with Sentinel coverage.
Without satellite data, identifying mosquito hotspots would require ground survey teams to physically inspect thousands of drains, an approach that is slow, expensive, and cannot be repeated annually at city scale. Sentinel's 5–12 day revisit frequency and 10–20 m resolution make it possible to derive water, vegetation, moisture and built-up indices for every drain in a city and refresh that picture every year at negligible marginal cost.
Combining EO indices with real entomological trap data and the mosquito's known dispersal range gives the model ecological grounding that generic satellite-monitoring competitors lack, and is what allows ZikaSeal to reduce a municipality's upfront capital deployment on physical barriers by up to 70% compared with treating every drain in the network.
Current Status
The Kick-Start ran from March to August 2026 and closed with its Final Review on 18 August 2026. The project engaged Monaco and Graz.. The modelling pipeline was built end-to-end, from automated Sentinel-1/2 and Copernicus climate data retrieval through to a browser dashboard. The EO-only feature pipeline was completed and shown to perform comparably to the original LiDAR-based baseline, reaching a proof-of-concept correlation of R²≈0.55–0.65 with observed mosquito intensity (TRL 5–6).
