Spatio-temporal modelling of foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks

C. Malesios, N. Demiris, P. Kostoulas, K. Dadousis, T. Koutroumanidis, Z. Abas

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We present and analyse data collected during a severe epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) that occurred between July and September 2000 in a region of northeastern Greece with strategic importance since it represents the southeastern border of Europe and Asia. We implement generic Bayesian methodology, which offers flexibility in the ability to fit several realistically complex models that simultaneously capture the presence of ‘excess’ zeros, the spatio-temporal dependence of the cases, assesses the impact of environmental noise and controls for multicollinearity issues. Our findings suggest that the epidemic was mostly driven by the size and the animal type of each farm as well as the distance between farms while environmental and other endemic factors were not important during this outbreak. Analyses of this kind may prove useful to informing decisions related to optimal control measures for potential future FMD outbreaks as well as other acute epidemics such as FMD.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2485-2493
JournalEpidemiology and infection
Volume144
Issue number12
Early online date6 May 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2016

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