Report on Epidemiological analysis of the 2006 bluetongue virus serotype 8 epidemic in north‐western Europe

One of the most important aspects of vector-borne infections is the strong influence of weather and climate on the transmission. In response to the major epidemic of bluetongue in north western Europe between summer and autumn 2006, an interest in BTV control issues developed. In this context, a map indicating the spatial variation in BTV risk in the north western European region would be very useful. To this end, a new approach is used in which they combine a mathematical epidemiological model and a geographical information system to obtain a spatially explicit measure for the risk of an outbreak of BTV when the virus is introduced in an area