Potential and confirmed disease outbreaks that are identified via electronic scanning are verified and tracked. They are also prioritized for further action, including follow-up, assessment, analysis, and communications.

VERIFIED
Verification is a critical component of the identification of an emerging animal health issue. The process of identification of emerging issues involves the use of soft data from sources such as news articles and web sites. Before further assessment, analysis, or response can take place, a potential issue must be verified.


TRACKED
In order to track emerging animal health issues, the Emerging Veterinary Events (eVe) system has been developed. A web-based application, eVe is used to house records of emerging issues generated by TAF’s surveillance efforts. By compiling event records from multiple data sources in once centralized database, emerging issues can be identified in a more timely fashion as well as tracked over time. The ADAM (Animal Disease Analysis Mapping) module is in development and will be integrated with the existing eVe system, providing web-based mapping and basic spatial analysis capability for the analysis of emerging animal health issues.


PRIORITIZED
Disease event entries in the eVe database are prioritized by TAF analysts in order to gauge the relative importance of an event. To accomplish this, a prioritization algorithm has been developed. After application of the algorithm, one of four rankings is assigned to the event record. These four rankings are described below.

The purpose of using an algorithm is to decrease subjectivity and increase consistency when disease events are prioritized by different analysts. However, due to the nature of the type of information being dealt with and the frequent incompleteness of the data, it will not be possible to totally eliminate subjectivity when dealing with emerging animal health issues.

Rank = high: Entries that are given a “high” rank will need to be monitored very closely. Timely and active follow-up is required for this priority level. Actions that may be taken with respect to this ranking include following up on the situation with persons that may have more details, providing appropriate Veterinary Services staff with information concerning the event, or producing a document for in-house or broader distribution that describes the event.

Rank = medium: Entries ranked ‘medium’ may require active follow-up to obtain event specifics and more current information. In addition, focused scanning for similar events in neighboring premises or jurisdictions may be required.

Rank = low: Entries assigned a rank of ‘low’ will require periodic monitoring and intermittent trend analysis of the disease.

Rank = other: Entries that are given an “other” ranking do not describe a disease occurrence per se, but are cataloged into the eVe system because they offer auxiliary information related to diseases such as disease management, research, surveillance, and regulatory information.

METHOD DEVELOPMENT
Creating a tool for assessing disease emergence potential in food fish aquaculture industries of the United States

The goal of this project was to explore the development of a tool utilizing information on biological, ecological, environmental, and societal factors which could assess disease emergence potential for an industry. Improved understanding and assessment of the complex factors associated with disease emergence and spread will lead to better management and thus reduction of risk for disease occurrence. If successful, the developed tool could be used by industry and government officials to identify areas of vulnerability and mitigation measures. It could also be used to monitor how changes in the dynamics associated with an industry increase or decrease disease emergence potential over time.

The United States food fish aquaculture industry was chosen for this project. The food fish industry both in the US and globally has been developing rapidly. The US industry has experienced several serious disease outbreaks in recent years, including the movement of known diseases, such as infectious salmon anemia, to new locations. Emergence of new diseases, such as white spot disease, has also been seen, with the subsequent movement of those diseases around the globe resulting in serious consequences.

Based on factors such as biological, ecologic, environmental, and societal, a qualitative tool was developed to assess risk for disease emergence or spread. Within this tool, three separate assessment elements were developed: novel disease evolution, pathways by which a disease agent could be introduced into a country, and spread from the location of introduction or evolution. Risk factors identified for each of the three elements consist of specific descriptions of production practices, consumer demand, trade, health conditions, and environmental conditions. These risk factors are scored and summed to determine each element’s score. The industry’s level of risk for disease emergence is determined for each element by calculating the total points achieved as a percentage of all points available.

Using this qualitative risk assessment tool, those factors contributing greatest to risk of disease emergence can be identified and targeted for mitigation. In addition, risk can be monitored over time, focusing on factors that either contribute most significantly to risk level or focusing on those that have the greatest potential for increasing disease emergence risk.