Authors: Lan Ge Anders R Kristensen Monique C Mourits Ruud B Huirne
Publish Date: 2010/07/17
Volume: 219, Issue: 1, Pages: 49-62
Abstract
Animal disease epidemics such as the footandmouth disease FMD pose recurrent threat to countries with intensive livestock production Efficient FMD control is crucial in limiting the damage of FMD epidemics and securing food production Decision making in FMD control involves a hierarchy of decisions made at strategic tactical and operational levels These decisions are interdependent and have to be made under uncertainty about future development of the epidemic Addressing this decision problem this paper presents a new decisionsupport framework based on multilevel hierarchic Markov processes MLHMP The MLHMP model simultaneously optimizes decisions at strategic tactical and operational levels using Bayesian forecasting methods to model uncertainty and learning about the epidemic As illustrated by the example the framework is especially useful in contingency planning for future FMD epidemicsThis article is published under an open access license Please check the Copyright Information section for details of this license and what reuse is permitted If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and reuse information please contact the Rights and Permissions team
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