As found in the health studies literature, the levels of climate association between epidemiological diseases have been found to vary across regions. Therefore, it seems reasonable to allow for the possibility that relationships might vary spatially within regions. We implemented the geographically weighted random forest (GWRF) machine learning method to analyze ecological disease patterns caused by spatially non-stationary processes using a malaria incidence dataset for Rwanda. We first compared the geographically weighted regression (WGR), the global random forest (GRF), and the geographically weighted random forest (GWRF) to examine the spatial non-stationarity in the non-linear relationships between malaria incidence and their risk factors. We used the Gaussian areal kriging model to disaggregate the malaria incidence at the local administrative cell level to understand the relationships at a fine scale since the model goodness of fit was not satisfactory to explain malaria incidence due to the limited number of sample values. Our results show that in terms of the coefficients of determination and prediction accuracy, the geographical random forest model performs better than the GWR and the global random forest model. The coefficients of determination of the geographically weighted regression (R2), the global RF (R2), and the GWRF (R2) were 4.74, 0.76, and 0.79, respectively. The GWRF algorithm achieves the best result and reveals that risk factors (rainfall, land surface temperature, elevation, and air temperature) have a strong non-linear relationship with the spatial distribution of malaria incidence rates, which could have implications for supporting local initiatives for malaria elimination in Rwanda.

Rapid urbanization and climate change are increasing the risks associated with natural hazards, especially in cities where socio-economic disparities are significant. Current hazard risk assessment frameworks fail to consider socio-economic factors, which limits their ability to effectively address vulnerabilities at the community level. This study introduces a machine learning framework designed to assess flood susceptibility and socio-economic vulnerability, particularly in urban areas with limited data. Using Kigali, Rwanda, as a case study, we quantified socio-economic vulnerability through a composite index that includes indicators of sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We utilized a variety of data sources, such as demographic, environmental, and remotely sensing datasets, applying machine learning algorithms like Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Random Forest, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and XGBoost. Among these, MLP achieved the best predictive performance, with an AUC score of 0.902 and an F1-score of 0.86. The findings indicate spatial differences in socio-economic vulnerability, with central and southern Kigali showing greater vulnerability due to a mix of socio-economic challenges and high flood risk. The vulnerability maps created were validated against historical flood records, socio-economic research, and expert insights, confirming their accuracy and relevance for urban risk assessment. Additionally, we tested the framework’s scalability and adaptability in Kampala, Uganda, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, showing that making context-specific adjustments to the model improves its transferability. This study offers a solid, data-driven approach for combining assessments of flood susceptibility and socio-economic vulnerability, filling important gaps in urban resilience planning. The results support the advancement of risk-informed decision-making, especially in areas with limited access to detailed socio-economic information.

Urbanization significantly enhances socio-economic conditions, health, and well-being for many by improving access to services, education, and economic opportunities. However, socio-economic and public health disparities are also being exacerbated by urbanization. The reliable data required to monitor these conditions are often unavailable, outdated, or inconsistent. This study introduces a multimodal deep learning framework that integrates satellite imagery with street network datasets to predict urban socio-economic indicators and public health determinants at the sector level as a political administrative unit of public health planning in Rwanda. We extracted latent visual and topological embeddings of the urban built environment, using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Graph Neural Network (GNN). These embeddings were fused through an attentional mechanism to train a multi-task regression model that simultaneously predicts multiple socio-economic indicators and public health determinants. This framework was applied to the City of Kigali in Rwanda. Overall, the multimodal fusion model achieved the best average performance across targets, with an average correlation of 0.68 and MAE of 1.26 for socio-economic indicators, and 0.68 and 1.46 for public health determinants, demonstrating the benefit of integrating visual and topological information. The learned fused embedding space arranges socio-economic indicators and public health determinant deciles along a continuous morphological gradient from sparsely built rural settings to dense urban settings, demonstrating that the urban form encodes latent signals that capture socio-economic indicators and health determinants. Moreover, the study reveals a strong relationship between socio-economic indicators and the public health index, with education, cooking materials, and floor materials exhibiting a correlation above 0.96. This work demonstrates the utility of an integrated framework for socio-economic indicator profiling and public health planning in data-scarce urban contexts, offering a scalable approach for monitoring the indicators of Sustainable Development Goals in rapidly changing urban environments.