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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Giles Budge
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2017 The Authors. Sentinel sites, where problems can be identified early or investigated in detail, form an important part of planning for exotic disease outbreaks in humans, livestock and plants. Key questions are: how many sentinels are required, where should they be positioned and how effective are they at rapidly identifying new invasions? The sentinel apiary system for invasive honeybee pests and diseases illustrates the costs and benefits of such approaches. Here, we address these issues with two mathematical modelling approaches. The first approach is generic and uses probabilistic arguments to calculate the average number of affected sites when an outbreak is first detected, providing rapid and general insights that we have applied to a range of infectious diseases. The second approach uses a computationally intensive, stochastic, spatial model to simulate multiple outbreaks and to determine appropriate sentinel locations for UKapiaries. Both models quantify the anticipated increase in success of sentinel sites as their number increases and as non-sentinel sites become worse at detection; however, unexpectedly sentinels perform relatively better for faster growing outbreaks. Additionally, the spatial model allows us to quantify the substantial role that carefully positioned sentinels can play in the rapid detection of exotic invasions.
Author(s): Keeling MJ, Datta S, Franklin DN, Flatman I, Wattam A, Brown M, Budge GE
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Year: 2017
Volume: 14
Online publication date: 26/04/2017
Acceptance date: 03/04/2017
Date deposited: 02/06/2017
ISSN (print): 1742-5689
ISSN (electronic): 1742-5662
Publisher: Royal Society
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2016.0908
DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2016.0908
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