Abstract After elimination of the Aedes aegypti vector in South America in the 1960s, dengue outbreaks started to reoccur during the 1990s; strongly in Argentina since 1998. In 2016, Córdoba City had the largest dengue outbreak in its history. In this article we report this outbreak including spatio-temporal analysis of cases and vectors in the city. A total of 653 dengue cases were recorded by the laboratory-based dengue surveillance system and georeferenced by their residential addresses. Case maps were gen- erated from the epidemiological week 1 (beginning of January) to week 19 (mid-May). Dengue outbreak temporal evolution was analysed globally and three specific, high-incidence zones were detected using Knox analysis to characterising its spatio-temporal attributes. Field and remotely sensed data were collected and anal- ysed in real time and a vector presence map based on the MaxEnt approach was generated to define hotspots, towards which the pes- ticide-based strategy was then targeted. The recorded pattern of cases evolution within the community suggests that dengue con- trol measures should be improved. Introduction Dengue is one of the most widespread vector-borne diseases in the world (TDR/WHO, 2009). Aedes aegypti, the main vector of the dengue virus (consisting of four different strains, i.e. DEN1-4) in Latin America is a day-biter and peridomestic mosquito that breeds preferably in containers related to the house-hold (Gurber, 1997; Vezzani and Carbajo, 2008). The inci- dence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades, with a concomitant increasing trend in outbreaks in South America during the past few years (Brathwaite et al., 2012; WHO, 2015). After the successful vector eradication campaign, carried out at the national level in the 1960s, the first outbreak of dengue in Argentina was documented in 1998 (Aviles et al., 1999). The largest notified dengue outbreak in Argentina before 2016 occurred in 2009. It reached subtropical regions affecting more than 25,900 people from localities as far south as Córdoba and Buenos Aires (Seijo, 2009). Most infections(>90%) occurred in the northern provinces of Chaco, Catamarca and Salta (MSN, 2009). Within the context of landscape epidemiology (Pavlovsky, 1996; Ostfeld et al., 2005), remotely sensed data and geospatial technologies are essential tools. Using these ideas and method- ological tools for the case of dengue epidemics within Argentina, a number of interdisciplinary studies were produced and pub- lished as predictive risk models based on environmental condi- tions (Estallo et al., 2008; Espinosa et al., 2011, 2012, 2016; Vergara et al., 2013; Dantur et al., 2015) and operational tools (Porcasi et al., 2012). As the current approach for dengue control is mainly based on vector control (Guzmán and Kouri, 2002; Guzmán et al., 2004), models based on remotely sensed data integrated with urban demography and socioeconomic data would allow prediction of spatio-temporal variation of vector population abundance. The strongest dengue outbreak in Argentina so far occurred in 2016. This outbreak started in early January 2015, coinciding with information from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) (https://iri.columbia.edu/) that the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) exceeded the threshold indicating weak El Niño conditions. In August, the SST had increased to what is considered a strong El Niño level. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the leading mode of year-to-year global climate variability (Cai et al., 2015) affecting global atmospheric circulation, thereby altering rainfall and weather patterns around the world and temporarily elevating global temperatures. In the last quarter of 2015, and the first quarter of 2016, extreme rain- fall was recorded in several parts of South America, particularly in Paraguay, northern Argentina and southern Brazil. About 180,000 people were affected by flooding and more than 80,000 Correspondence: Ximena Porcasi, Instituto de Altos Estudios Espaciales Mario Gulich, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, Centro Espacial Teófilo Tabanera, Córdoba, Argentina. E-mail: ximena.porcasi@conae.gov.ar Key words: Remote sensing; Operational tools; Dengue outbreak; Córdoba; Argentina. Acknowledgments: we thank the Ministerio de Salud de la Provincia de Córdoba. DEG is Researcher of CONICET, Argentina. Received for publication: 7 March 2017. Revision received: 22 June 2017. Accepted for publication: 29 June 2017. ©Copyright C. Rotela et al., 2017 Licensee PAGEPress, Italy Geospatial Health 2017; 12:564 doi:10.4081/gh.2017.564 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original author(s) and source are credited. Analytical report of the 2016 dengue outbreak in Córdoba city, Argentina Camilo Rotela, 1 Laura Lopez, 2 María Frías Céspedes, 2 Gabriela Barbas, 2 Andrés Lighezzolo, 1 Ximena Porcasi, 1 Mario A. Lanfri, 1 Carlos M. Scavuzzo, 1 David E. Gorla 1 1 Instituto de Altos Estudios Espaciales Mario Gulich, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, Centro Espacial Teófilo Tabanera, Córdoba; 2 Ministerio de Salud, Gobierno de la Provincia de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina [page 226] [Geospatial Health 2017; 12:564] Geospatial Health 2017; volume 12:564 Non commercial use only