Epidemiological-behavioural modelling applied to public, veterinary and plant health

One of my research interests is addressing interdisciplinary problems in epidemiology that involve the dynamics of behaviour. Application areas span public, veterinary and plant health policy. I refer to quantitative models that incorporate both epidemiological and behavioural dynamics as epidemiological-behavioural models.

Peer-reviewed publications:

FEED project: One such example is my involvement in the BBSRC funded project Farmer-led Epidemic & Endemic Disease-management (FEED) project. The FEED project began in October 2019. I have been part of a collaborative team, joint with colleagues from the University of Warwick and University of Nottingham.

The FEED project studied the impact on livestock disease outbreaks of farmer-led control and variation in livestock disease management behaviours amongst farmers. In the event of an outbreak of infectious disease on livestock farms, tensions may arise when inaction may be the most cost-effective strategy for an individual farmer even though this could lead to local protracted epidemics. As an extreme example, an individual farmer is in most instances better to risk infection than proactively cull their livestock; yet culling may be a powerful tool to prevent large-scale outbreaks of some diseases.

Our primary objective in this project is to quantify, predict and hence mitigate this inevitable tension between local (farmer-led) and global (nationally-enforced) control of livestock diseases. This will be achieved by predicting the differences between national-level and farmer-level optimisation of controls using mathematical models that combine disease spread and farmer behaviour. Specific livestock infections that pose a threat to the UK livestock industry that we have explored are:

  • Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)
  • Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD)

The University of Warwick team is led by Michael Tildesley & Matt Keeling.

Our research partners at the University of Nottingham, carrying out the elicitation of farmers beliefs, are: Martin Green, Eamonn Ferguson, Jasmeet Kaler and Naomi Prosser.

FEED project publications: