As the hot, humid weather descended on Houston's Harris County this spring, the county's mosquito surveillance team geared up for the busiest season in its fight to get ahead of dangerous mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika. This year, however, the team had a new weapon in its toolkit: A sleek-looking mosquito trap that experts say marks the biggest innovation in trap technology in decades. "It's really 1,000 times better," said Mustapha Debboun, the director of Harris County Public Health's mosquito control division.

The prototype trap, part of Microsoft's broader Project Premonition research project, is designed to automatically do things entomologists previously had to do manually or not at all. For example, the new trap, which is being deployed in the Houston area for the first time this month as part of a pilot project, is designed to only collect the type of mosquito an entomologist wants to track, instead of a hodgepodge of mosquitoes, flies, moths and other critters that scientists then need to manually sort through.

The trap also can tell researchers what time each mosquito was trapped, as well as what the temperature, wind and humidity was when the mosquito flew in. And it's designed to withstand the rain, wind and other elements that can batter traditional traps and take them out of commission. "We'll have a plethora of data we never had before about the behaviour of the insects," said Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft researcher who is leading Project Premonition.

Debboun and his team at Harris County Public Health expect the traps to provide faster, more accurate information about where they can find the mosquitoes that pose the biggest health risk because they could be spreading diseases such as Dengue fever, chikungunya, West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis and Zika. That, in turn, will allow the team to target the areas of the vast county that need it most, saving time and money. "In a county with this size and scope, we don't have the resources to just cover the county and spray, spray, spray," said Les Becker, the deputy director and director of operations for Harris County Public Health. "We've got to figure out how to do it as efficiently as possible."