Institute of Advanced Virology builds a machine learning Dengue Early Warning System for Kerala's districts

18 October 2026

The Institute of Advanced Virology at Thiruvananthapuram, a state autonomous institution, has developed a Dengue Early Warning System, or DEWS, to predict district-level dengue outbreak risk in Kerala. The team was led by Dr Abhinand C S of the institute's Virus Genomics, Bioinformatics and Statistics Division. The model combines Kerala Health Department surveillance data with India Meteorological Department data on rainfall, temperature and humidity, using daily records from March 2020 to February 2026, and produces weekly district-level forecasts across four risk levels, low, moderate, high and very high, with an interactive risk map. The forecast window shown runs from 1 November 2026 to 16 January 2027. Kerala has recorded 12,355 confirmed dengue cases and 44 deaths so far in 2026, including 751 cases and one death in the first 16 days of October. A separate study using 14 years of data from 2006 to 2019 projects that dengue incidence could rise 16 to 20 per cent during 2021 to 2040 and by up to 113 per cent towards the end of the century, with about 60 per cent of cases falling between late May and September.