Epidemiological models that simulate the spread of Foot-and-Mouth Disease within a herd are the foundation of decision support tools used by governments to help advise and inform strategy to combat outbreaks. Contact transmission data used to parameterize these models, contrary to assumption, contain a significant amount of variability and uncertainty. The implications of this finding suggest that the resultant model output might not accurately simulate the spread of an outbreak. If this is true, the potential impact due to uncertainty inherent to the decision support tools used by governments might be significant.
Objective
The objective of this project is to understand how parametric un- certainty within intra-herd Foot-and-Mouth disease epidemiological models affects the outbreak simulations and what implications this has on surveillance and control strategy and policy.