JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mosquito-borne diseases remain a major global health burden and are increasingly influenced by climatic and environmental changes. Agent-based models (ABMs) allow detailed representation of host–vector interactions and environmental heterogeneity; however, modelling approaches vary substantially across studies.

Objective:

This scoping review aimed to identify and characterize ABMs developed to simulate mosquito-borne disease transmission in relation to climatic and weather-related drivers, focusing on model structure, environmental integration, and validation approaches.

Methods:

Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, literature searches were conducted in PubMed and IEEE Xplore up to 10 December 2025. Studies were included if they described agent-based or individual-based models simulating transmission between humans and mosquitoes and incorporated weather- or climate-dependent processes. Data were extracted using a structured framework covering methodological and environmental characteristics.

Results:

Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria, primarily addressing dengue (n=7) and malaria (n=6) in tropical and subtropical regions. Most models reused existing frameworks and represented humans as individual agents, while mosquito populations were sometimes aggregated. Temperature and rainfall were the most frequently included environmental drivers, but their implementation ranged from simple empirical functions to mechanistic process-based implementations and varied considerably in temporal resolution. Calibration to empirical data was common, whereas validation procedures were often limited or insufficiently reported. No studies simulated European settings.

Conclusions:

ABMs provide valuable tools for investigating climate-sensitive transmission dynamics of mosquito-borne diseases. However, substantial heterogeneity in model design, environmental integration, and validation limits comparability. Improved reporting standards, better validation data, and increased focus on temperate regions and future climate scenarios are essential to improve comparability, reproducibility, and policy relevance of ABMs in climate-sensitive disease modelling.