Table 1 Definitions and abbreviations

Closed habitat

Any stagnant or slow-flowing water body which is not exposed to the sun and therefore unlikely to produce Anopheles malaria vectors but may produce culicines, notably abundant Culex quinquefasciatus [33, 34].

CORP

Community-Owned Resource Person. The responsibility for routine mosquito surveillance and application of larvicide is delegated to CORPs, who are individual community members appointed and managed through neighbourhood health committees [29].

GIS

Geographical Information System. GIS is a set of tools for capturing, storing, retrieving, transforming and displaying spatial data.

GPS

Global Positioning System. An operational system that allow receiving and converting signals from satellites to a specific position on Earth.

Municipality

The Dar es Salaam City Region is subdivided into three municipalities (the equivalent term for districts in urban Tanzania), namely Ilala, Temeke and Kinondoni.

Neighbourhood

The 73 wards of the Dar es Salaam City Region are administratively subdivided into 368 neighbourhoods. The 15 wards covered by UMCP comprise 67 neighbourhoods. The local Kiswahili term for neighbourhood is mtaa (plural mitaa) which literally means "street".

Open habitat

Any stagnant or slow-flowing water body which is openly exposed to sunlight, even if only partially and for a portion of the day. These constitute potential habitats for malaria vector Anopheles mosquitoes [61, 70], as well as a variety of culicines.

Plot

All TCUs within the wards covered by the UMCP are subdivided into plots. A plot is defined here as a specific physical area with an identifiable owner, occupant or user and with clearly defined boundaries within one specific TCU. The plot boundaries are defined by UMCP staff. Therefore, the plots do not always correspond to actual cadastral information such as land ownership.

Region

The United Republic of Tanzania is divided into 26 administrative regions, of which Dar es Salaam city and its associated hinterland is one.

TCU

Ten-Cell-Unit. The 368 neighbourhoods (mitaa) of the Dar es Salaam City Region are subdivided into several thousand ten-cell-units (TCUs). These are the smallest units of local government, headed by a locally elected chairperson. In principle, TCUs should comprise ten houses each but are typically larger in practice and sometimes exceed one hundred houses.

UMCP

Urban Malaria Control Programme of the Dar es Salaam City Medical Office of Health, developed in co-operation with national and international research and funding organizations.

Ward

The three municipalities of the Dar es Salaam City Region are subdivided into 73 administrative sub-units known as wards. Currently, 15 of these wards are covered by the UMCP.