A comparison of predictions made by three simulation models of foot-and-mouth disease

Abstract

Relative validation is one of a number of steps that can be undertaken to increase end-user confidence in predictions made by infectious disease models.

Decision-making for foot-and-mouth disease control: Objectives matter

“…The literature on FMD control provides myriad examples, including the number of livestock slaughtered (Durand and Mahul, 2000), number of infected farms on which animals are culled (Schoenbaum and Disney, 2003), the number of farms where animals are pre-emptively slaughtered (Velthuis and Mourits, 2007), export losses from trade bans (Paarlberg et al, 2008), livestock slaughter compensation costs (Sanson et al, 2014), total number of farms vaccinated (Tildesley et al, 2006), spatial area of the outbreak (Dubé et al, 2007), and outbreak duration (Morris et al, 2001). In choosing any particular metric to compare control actions, a statement is implicitly being made about the objective of management.…”

“…For outbreak duration, a number of statistics have been used in the literature for summarising this metric such as the average time until disease eradication (Morris et al, 2001), the median outbreak duration (Roche et al, 2014a), the probability of disease eradication within 200 days (Morris et al, 2001), the 95 th percentile of outbreak duration (Velthuis and Mourits, 2007), and sophisticated comparisons of the whole distribution in outcome metrics (Dubé et al, 2007). These are all statistics of outbreak duration yet, as with the choice of metric, not all statistics of outbreak duration are positively correlated with one another and the choice of statistic will also influence which control action is recommended.…”

“…Several research groups have previously compared multiple models in the evaluation of FMD control strategies (e.g. Dubé et al, 2007; Roche et al, 2014a; Halasa et al, 2014). A multi-model situation illustrates that, while concordance in recommended control action across models may provide validation and reassurance, differences in control action recommendation within the same objective but across different models may highlight potentially useful differences in models and the assumptions governing those models.…”

A novel spatial and stochastic model to evaluate the within and between farm transmission of classical swine fever virus: II Validation of the model

“…If the models compared produce similar results, even if they were developed independently or with different methods, the confidence and credibility on the model increase. Some examples of docking have been presented in Dubé et al (2007).…”

Coping without farm location data during a foot-and-mouth outbreak

“…In particular, spatially explicit simulation models (9) have helped to quantify the relationship between farm density in the United Kingdom and transmissibility (10). Although similar approaches have been used to describe likely patterns of transmission in the United States (11), Australia (12), Korea (13), New Zealand (14), and the Netherlands (15), analysis of the 2001 United Kingdom outbreak benefits from an unusually rich dataset. Precise locations are available for both affected and unaffected farms; furthermore, the number of infected premises during 2001 was sufficient to permit accurate estimation of key transmission parameters.…”