Abstract
Background
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals. As a transboundary animal disease, the prevention and control of FMD are important. This study was based on spatial multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to assess FMD risk areas in mainland China. Ten risk factors were identified for constructing risk maps by scoring, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to calculate the criteria weights of all factors. Different risk factors had different units and attributes, and fuzzy membership was used to standardize the risk factors. The weighted linear combination (WLC) and one-at-a-time (OAT) were used to obtain risk and uncertainty maps as well as to perform sensitivity analysis.
Results
Four major risk areas were identified in mainland China, including western (Xinjiang and Tibet), southern (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Guangdong), northern (Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia), and eastern (Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong). We found spring as the main season for FMD outbreaks. Risk areas were associated with the distance to previous outbreak points, grazing areas and cattle density. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis indicated that the risk map had good predictive power (AUC = 0.8532).
Conclusions
These results can be used to delineate FMD risk areas in mainland China, and provinces can adopt the targeted preventive measures and control strategies.
Herd-level risk factors associated with tuberculosis breakdowns among cattle herds in England before the 2001 foot‐and‐mouth disease epidemic
