Assessment of the interactions between the European Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Spread model (EuFMDiS) and the SIGMA project

Abstract

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) launched the project SIGMA to improve data collection, data quality and EFSAs ability to perform epidemiological analyses. SIGMA also aims to provide the member states with an epidemiological tool to use with the data they submitted to SIGMA. This work assesses the feasibility of integrating the European Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Spread model (EuFMDiS) as the epidemiological tool and the EFSA Scientific Data Warehouse where the SIGMA data will be stored. In the assessment it is investigated how and which data in SIGMA could be used in EuFMDiS, possible IT solutions and possible user cases. The results show that an integration could be possible from a technical perspective but would require more investigation on legal aspects. The majority of the data needed for EuFMDiS do not exist in SIGMA and it is important to consider the purpose of an integration and if the same benefits could be achieved without an integration.