The Rift Valley fever (RVF) risk maps on this website were developed to provide early warning of when and where the environmental conditions pose a high risk for possible RVF outbreaks in South Africa. While this allows to predict when and where the environment could support an RVF outbreak(s), the actual occurrence of an outbreak will depend on several factors that cannot be included in the model, such as the level of immunity in livestock from either natural infection or vaccination, or whether RVF virus is circulating in the local mosquitoes

The model is intended to show the risk of a possible RVF outbreak one month in advance, given recent environmental and climatic conditions. It is hoped that it will provide farmers with information to encourage them to vaccinate when risk is increasing (if they had not already recently done so), and consider when to move animals away from grazing around pans.