Spatiotemporal Variation in Distance Dependent Animal Movement Contacts: One Size Doesn't Fit All.

ABSTRACT: The structure of contacts that mediate transmission has a pronounced effect on the outbreak dynamics of infectious disease and simulation models are powerful tools to inform policy decisions. Most simulation models of livestock disease spread rely to some degree on predictions of animal movement between holdings. Typically, movements are more common between nearby farms than between those located far away from each other. Here, we assessed spatiotemporal variation in such distance dependence of animal movement contacts from an epidemiological perspective. We evaluated and compared nine statistical models, applied to Swedish movement data from 2008. The models differed in at what level (if at all), they accounted for regional and/or seasonal heterogeneities in the distance dependence of the

SUBMITTER: Brommesson P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5070834 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature