From mosquito surveillance to sewage monitoring, EU-funded researchers are combining a variety of data technologies to detect early signs of emerging infections.
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With the global pandemic awakening in early 2020, a new EU-funded research program has just begun – the versatile emerging infectious disease observatory (VEO). Researchers involved in this timely initiative have set out to improve our response to public health emergencies through better disease surveillance. Their efforts have become more relevant and important in the face of the Covid-19 health crisis.
Five years later, the course on the importance of pandemic preparation remains resonant for Professor Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist at the Eras Musmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Koopmans, who is internationally recognized for his expertise in emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases, is coordinating the VEO initiative.
“Kuved instilled a sense of urgency about the risks of the pandemic. It also shows that infrastructure is not ready for this rapid movement and amplification of the spread of the disease,” she said.
Detecting hot spots of disease
Koopmans has worked in the field of public health for decades, studying how diseases move between humans, animals and the environment, including influenza, smallpox, Ebola, Ebola, Zika, and M-Pox.
Through this work, she realized that existing surveillance systems were not intended to be in sync with the rapid emergence of new infectious diseases.
“We are pursuing one virus today, another tomorrow, and we need to be smarter,” she said.
With VEO, she pioneered a more proactive, joined surveillance method that combines data from emerging diseases, whether it is mosquitoes, birds or through wastewater, and is associated with new threats related to climate change.
Instead of focusing on one problem or pathogen, Veo takes a holistic approach, scanning multiple potential hotspots for early warning signals.
“Our goal with VEO is to get to the right place as early as possible at the right time and to solve the problem in the bud before it explodes,” she said.
Mosquito monitoring
Professor Frederic Bartumeus from the Spanish Brians Advanced Research Center led the mosquito alert, part of Veo’s work on the rise of mosquitoes-transmitting diseases in Europe.
Diseases such as dengue fever or West Nile virus that were once confined to tropical areas are increasingly emerging in Europe.
Dengue has been rising steadily since 2010, with more than 400 local cases mainly in Italy and France. The West Nile virus is also spreading northward. According to data from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024 reported in humans, birds and horses to Germany and Poland.
Bartumeus noted that human movement, climate change, and the expansion of geographical scope of different types of mosquitoes as the main drivers. Now, through VEO, his team is able to uncover new insights into how they spread.
For example, Mosquito Alert is a citizen science application that allows the public to send photos of mosquitoes, source data across populations across vast areas.
The application is available in 19 languages and is available in Europe and beyond. Through VEO, it is used to train AI models to identify mosquitoes from photos. It is helping local health teams predict risks and guide targeted control strategies.
However, gathering these data with other sources is always a bigger win.
“Preparation involves not only pathogens and human diseases, but also related to the systems that are expected and connected to them. Projects like VEO are no longer optional – they are essential,” Bartumeus said.
Prepare for disease x
At the Denmark Technical University, Frank Aarestrup, an expert in antimicrobial resistance at VEO, leads another part of Veo’s work: monitoring wastewater to track early signs of a “silent epidemic.”
Traditional surveillance focuses on symptomatic patients. In contrast, sewage surveillance tracks changes in healthy populations. It can capture the presence of bacterial pathogens, viruses, parasites and antibacterial resistance genes at once.
“Swage-based surveillance can be a very good opportunity for completely novel pathogens that we have not yet looked for in clinical diagnosis,” Aarestrup said.
In the north, in Greenland, France also explores how the rising Arctic temperature may unlock hidden pathogens that have been trapped in permafrost for centuries.
The project involves expeditions on ice to analyze bacteria found in soils found in archaeological “hot spots” – places where human waste was deposited historically.
Their results suggest that traces of bacteria remain, and future permafrost melting may reveal important clues to tracking new diseases.
Koopmans believes that climate change in Greenland will also affect broader disease patterns, such as the shift in bird migration.
“Some parts of Greenland are migration movements that come from Europe, Asia and America,” she said. “With climate change and melting ice, it is possible to attract more birds over a longer period of time, opening up a new highway for the spread of the disease.”
With all this setting, the real goal of VEO is to promote identification and rapid response to “disease X,” a hypothetical but unknown pathogen that could one day trigger a future pandemic like Covid-19. In June 2025, the team is conducting a simulation burst simulation to test their system.
Leave a legacy
The end of this year will mark the official completion date of the VEO project, but Koopmans hopes its legacy will continue, helping to provide stepping stones to assist future pandemic preparation plans.
In the near future, most of the VEO data that has been generated will be reused by others, and the team is busy creating a user-friendly application for anyone interested in the field.
The achievements of the VEO team will also be held at the “Cultivation Tomorrow” Pavilion at the 2025 Osaka World Expo in Japan. For Koopmans, it is an opportunity to showcase the WEO mission to a global audience and highlight the crucial message: Smart disease surveillance depends on robust systems and close international collaboration.
“VEO really demonstrates how to build a prepared surveillance system – no matter what pathogens appear next, the tools are in place,” she said. “It would be great to continue this work through future partnerships.”
The research in this article is funded by the EU’s Horizon Program. The views of respondents do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.
This article was originally published in the European Journal of Research and Innovation.
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