A surveillance of chigger mites was performed to monitor the incidence of scrub typhus vectors at four environmental collection points in two locations (Sunchang and Haenam) in the Honam region of Korea from August to December 2023. During the surveillance period, 4,174 chigger mites were collected and the predominant species were Leptotrombidium scutellare (94.3%). The density of chigger mites had the peaked at 44 week (10.26~11.1), while the density of patients peaked at 45 week (11.2~11.8) respectively. A positive correlation (r=0.69) observed between scrub typhus patients and vectors. This result suggests that this vector surveillance method will be useful for alarm system of tsutsugamushi disease. However, the relationship between scrub typhus cases and chigger mite density will be studied through long-term periodic surveillance.

Adverse weather is a big challenge not only for the safety of drivers but the safety of Autonomous Vehicles (AV). The gap between human-driving and AV-driving in terms of adverse-weather-perception can be a new challenge for highway engineers. Solutions minimizing the gap need to be defined. By this, the smart road technologies can be specified and developed. The way how to define and quantify the gap is introduced in this presentation.

The purpose of this monitoring is to survey the geographical distribution of tick species using dry ice bait traps and flagging methods at each ten provinces (GangwonⅠ,GangwonⅡ, Gyeonggi, Chungbuk, Chungnam, Gyeongbuk, Gyeongnam, Jeonbuk, Jeonnam and Jeju area) and one Metropolitan area in the Republic of Korea for eight months from April through November, 2016. A total of 65,339 ixodid ticks (8,200 females, 1,988 males, 31,453 nymphs and 23,698 larvae) was collected, belonging to three genera (Haemaphysalis, Ixodes and Amblyomma). Haemaphysalis longicornis was the most commonly collected species, which is represented for 96.88% of all the collected ticks and followed by H. flava (2.69%), I. nipponensis (0.35%), A. testudinarium (0.05%) and H. japonica (0.03%) in the Republic of Korea for the study period. Haemaphysalis longicornis was a dominant species observed in these eleven areas.