Tools for Designing and Evaluating Post-Border Surveillance Systems

Abstract

Biosecurity surveillance is the collection, collation, analysis, interpretation and timely dissemination of information on the presence, distribution or prevalence of pests or diseases and the plants or animals that they affect (MAFBNZ, 2009b as cited in Acosta & White, 2011). When undertaken post-border, biosecurity surveillance activities are carried out for a variety of purposes: to achieve market access, to detect new pests and diseases sufficiently early to allow for cost-effective management, to establish the boundaries of a known pest or disease population and to monitor the progress of existing containment or eradication programmes. Integrated and efficient surveillance plans are essential for effective allocation of limited biosecurity resources, successful pest control and the maintenance of important export markets. In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of many of the theoretical methods and models for designing and evaluating post- border surveillance, but our focus is on the readily applicable tools that have emerged from this theoretical work. These tools range in character from rules of thumb and simple formulae to simulation models with user-friendly interfaces. We discuss how each tool fits into the postborder surveillance framework, where to locate a particular tool and the contexts in which each tool has been applied. A more detailed explanation of key theoretical methods and models can be found in other chapters of this book; for example, predicting the spread of invasives is found in Chapters 5 and 6, optimising resource allocation is in Chapter 15, while the theory behind eradication, scenario trees and pathways analysis is given in Chapters 16 and 17. Our discussion assumes that the reader has some knowledge of the many concepts and methods from economics and statistics that are relevant to post-border surveillance. Rather than include an explanation of these, we refer the reader to Chapter 10 for a discussion of economic concepts, and to Chapter 18 for a discussion on key statistical concepts and well-known sampling designs. We do, however, include a discussion on the likelihood of detecting a pest or disease that is central to the quantitative surveillance tools reviewed in this chapter.