Venezuela’s Vulnerability to Chagas Disease vectors

To consolidate the large amount of information produced at different administrative levels within Venezuela (county, state, country), we amalgamated the four SSCI (-1, 0, 1, 2) values into one index at the county level (AIco). Then we calculated an amalgamated vulnerability index of each state of Venezuela by averaging the AIco among counties after weighing each AIco by the proportion of its human population within the state (that is, the human population potentially exposed to a change (intensity and direction)) in the geographic distribution of triatomines), we called this weighted average the “State Vulnerability Index” (SVI).