scholarly journals Towards a Framework for High-Performance Simulation of Livestock Disease Outbreak: A Case Study of Spread of African Swine Fever in Vietnam

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2743
Author(s):  
Linh Manh Pham ◽  
Nikos Parlavantzas ◽  
Huy-Ham Le ◽  
Quang Hung Bui
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
African Swine Fever ◽  
Performance Simulation ◽  
Epidemic Simulation ◽  
Large Geographical Area ◽  
Architectural Framework ◽  
Veterinary Epidemiology

The spread of disease in livestock is an important research topic of veterinary epidemiology because it provides warnings or advice to organizations responsible for the protection of animal health in particular and public health in general. Disease transmission simulation programs are often deployed with different species, disease types, or epidemiological models, and each research team manages its own set of parameters relevant to their target diseases and concerns, resulting in limited cooperation and reuse of research results. Furthermore, these simulation and decision support tools often require a large amount of computational power, especially for models involving tens of thousands of herds with millions of individuals spread over a large geographical area such as a region or a country. It is a matter of fact that epidemic simulation programs are often heterogeneous, but they often share some common workflows including processing of input data and execution of simulation, as well as storage, analysis, and visualization of results. In this article, we propose a novel architectural framework for simultaneously deploying any epidemic simulation program both on premises and on the cloud to improve performance and scalability. We also conduct some experiments to evaluate the proposed architectural framework on some aspects when applying it to simulate the spread of African swine fever in Vietnam.

scholarly journals Development of a pandemic of African Swine Fever

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (02) ◽  
pp. 6186-2019
Author(s):  
ZYGMUNT PEJSAK ◽  
MARIAN TRUSZCZYŃSKI ◽  
KAZIMIERZ TARASIUKL
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Wild Boar ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Swine Influenza ◽  
African Swine Fever ◽  
World Health ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
Veterinary Epidemiology

In the introduction of this paper the increasingly accepted nomenclature of basic expressions used in veterinary epidemiology is presented. This is in accordance with the 2018 Edition of Wiley-Blackwell Veterinary Epidemiology, by Michael Thrusfield. Pandemia and not Panzootia is used for large scale outbreaks of infectious diseases also in relation to animals characterizing significantly increased morbidity and mortatlity over a wide geographic area, including countries, continents or even the whole globe and causing significant economic, social and even political disruption. It is underlined that the pandemics of infectious diseases of animals will continue to increase because of the growing transboundary trade and transportation of animals and animal products and increasing international contacts of humans. In the control of pandemics of humans, particularly, for example of influenza of the years 1918-1919, and also in 1968, but also pandemics of other ethiology occurring in humans the World Health Organisation (WHO) took the leading position. In case of avian and swine influenza as well as in pandemics occurring in animals, the leading position in prevention, control and eradication belongs to World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The main part of this paper is devoted to the characterization of the pandemic of African Swine Fever (ASF) which started in 2007 in Georgia, transmitted from Africa. Countries, where ASF virus (ASFV) was confirmed by laboratory tests are mentioned in the text of this paper. They are located in Eurasia. Among them are countries, being members of the European Union (EU). The routs of spreading of the ASFV in wild boar and swine are given, the methods of ASF control in EU were presented. The main vector of the ASF spread in EU, is the wild boar and the humans. Future distribution of the pandemia spread of ASFV is difficult to predict. Veterinary services of many countries, practitioners and scientists are working intensively to understand epidemiology of ASF and to stop the spread of ASFV.

scholarly journals Towards risk-based surveillance of African Swine Fever in Switzerland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Elena Vargas-Amado ◽  
Luís Pedro Carmo ◽  
John Berezowski ◽  
Claude Fischer ◽  
Maria João Santos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Wild Boar ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
African Swine Fever ◽  
Early Disease ◽  
Domestic Pig ◽  
Domestic Pigs

African Swine Fever (ASF) has emerged as a disease of great concern to swine producers and government disease control agencies because of its severe consequences to animal health and the pig industry. Early detection of an ASF introduction is considered essential for reducing the harm caused by the disease. Risk-based surveillance approaches have been used as enhancements to early disease epidemic detection systems in livestock populations. Such approaches may consider the role wildlife plays in hosting and transmitting a disease. In this study, a novel method is presented to estimate and map the risk of introducing ASF into the domestic pig population through wild boar intermediate hosts. It makes use of data about hunted wild boar, rest areas along motorways connecting ASF affected countries to Switzerland, outdoor piggeries, and forest cover. These data were used to compute relative wild boar abundance as well as to estimate the risk of both disease introduction into the wild boar population and disease transmission to domestic pigs. The way relative wild boar abundance was calculated adds to the current state of the art by considering the effect of beech mast on hunting success and the probability of wild boar occurrence when distributing relative abundance values among individual grid cells. The risk of ASF introduction into the domestic pig population by wild boar was highest near the borders of France, Germany, and Italy. On the north side of the Alps, areas of high risk were located on the unshielded side of the main motorway crossing the Central Plateau, which acts as a barrier for wild boar. The results of this study can be used to focus surveillance efforts for early disease detection on high risk areas. The developed method may also inform policies to control other diseases that are transmitted by direct contact from wild boar to domestic pigs.

scholarly journals Opportunistic Network Algorithms for Internet Traffic Offloading in Music Festival Scenarios

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3315
Author(s):  
Aida-Ștefania Manole ◽  
Radu-Ioan Ciobanu ◽  
Ciprian Dobre ◽  
Raluca Purnichescu-Purtan
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Mobility Model ◽  
Routing Algorithms ◽  
Message Delivery ◽  
Opportunistic Network ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Network Algorithms ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
Social Metrics

Constant Internet connectivity has become a necessity in our lives. Hence, music festival organizers allocate part of their budget for temporary Wi-Fi equipment in order to sustain the high network traffic generated in such a small geographical area, but this naturally leads to high costs that need to be decreased. Thus, in this paper, we propose a solution that can help offload some of that traffic to an opportunistic network created with the attendees’ smartphones, therefore minimizing the costs of the temporary network infrastructure. Using a music festival-based mobility model that we propose and analyze, we introduce two routing algorithms which can enable end-to-end message delivery between participants. The key factors for high performance are social metrics and limiting the number of message copies at any given time. We show that the proposed solutions are able to offer high delivery rates and low delivery delays for various scenarios at a music festival.

scholarly journals Feeding sites promoting wildlife-related tourism might highly expose the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) to parasite transmission

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Afonso ◽  
Rong Fu ◽  
Amaël Dupaix ◽  
Anne-Claude Goydadin ◽  
ZhongHua Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
Transmission Risk ◽  
Parasite Transmission ◽  
Rhinopithecus Bieti ◽  
Domesticated Animals ◽  
Feeding Sites ◽  
In The Wild

AbstractAn increasing number of studies have found that the implementation of feeding sites for wildlife-related tourism can affect animal health, behaviour and reproduction. Feeding sites can favour high densities, home range overlap, greater sedentary behaviour and increased interspecific contacts, all of which might promote parasite transmission. In the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti), human interventions via provisioning monkeys at specific feeding sites have led to the sub-structuring of a group into genetically differentiated sub-groups. The fed subgroup is located near human hamlets and interacts with domesticated animals. Using high-throughput sequencing, we investigated Entamoeba species diversity in a local host assemblage strongly influenced by provisioning for wildlife-related tourism. We identified 13 Entamoeba species or lineages in faeces of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, humans and domesticated animals (including pigs, cattle, and domestic chicken). In Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, Entamoeba prevalence and OTU richness were higher in the fed than in the wild subgroup. Entamoeba polecki was found in monkeys, pigs and humans, suggesting that this parasite might circulates between the wild and domestic components of this local social–ecological system. The highest proportion of faeces positive for Entamoeba in monkeys geographically coincided with the presence of livestock and humans. These elements suggest that feeding sites might indirectly play a role on parasite transmission in the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. The implementation of such sites should carefully consider the risk of creating hotspots of disease transmission, which should be prevented by maintaining a buffer zone between monkeys and livestock/humans. Regular screenings for pathogens in fed subgroup are necessary to monitor transmission risk in order to balance the economic development of human communities dependent on wildlife-related tourism, and the conservation of the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey.

scholarly journals 88: Effectiveness of Therapeutic Hypothermia on Transport within a Large Geographical Area

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. e66-e66
Author(s):  
S Redpath ◽  
B Lemyre ◽  
H Moore ◽  
J Ponnuthurai ◽  
J Chan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Hypothermia ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Large Geographical Area

scholarly journals Spatio-temporal patterns and movement analysis of pigs from smallholder farms and implications for African swine fever spread, Limpopo province, South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Folorunso O. Fasina ◽  
Japhta M. Mokoele ◽  
B. Tom Spencer ◽  
Leo A.M.L. Van Leengoed ◽  
Yvette Bevis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
African Swine Fever ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Critical Control Points ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Disease Dispersal

Infectious and zoonotic disease outbreaks have been linked to increasing volumes of legal and illegal trade. Spatio-temporal and trade network analyses have been used to evaluate the risks associated with these challenges elsewhere, but few details are available for the pig sector in South Africa. Regarding pig diseases, Limpopo province is important as the greater part of the province falls within the African swine fever control area. Emerging small-scale pig farmers in Limpopo perceived pig production as an important means of improving their livelihood and an alternative investment. They engage in trading and marketing their products with a potential risk to animal health, because the preferred markets often facilitate potential longdistance spread and disease dispersal over broad geographic areas. In this study, we explored the interconnectedness of smallholder pig farmers in Limpopo, determined the weaknesses and critical control points, and projected interventions that policy makers can implement to reduce the risks to pig health. The geo-coordinates of surveyed farms were used to draw maps, links and networks. Predictive risks to pigs were determined through the analyses of trade networks, and the relationship to previous outbreaks of African swine fever was postulated. Auction points were identified as high-risk areas for the spread of animal diseases. Veterinary authorities should prioritise focused surveillance and diagnostic efforts in Limpopo. Early disease detection and prompt eradication should be targeted and messages promoting enhanced biosecurity to smallholder farmers are advocated. The system may also benefit from the restructuring of marketing and auction networks. Since geographic factors and networks can rapidly facilitate pig disease dispersal over large areas, a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the complexities that exist around the animal disease epidemiology becomes mandatory.

High-Performance Simulation of High-Beta Plasmas Using PIC Method

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-215
Author(s):  
Igor Chernykh ◽  
Vitaly Vshivkov ◽  
Galina Dudnikova ◽  
Tatyana Liseykina ◽  
Ekaterina Genrikh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Performance Simulation ◽  
Pic Method ◽  
High Beta

scholarly journals Suitability of Different Deterrents for Short-Term Reduction of Wild Boar Contacts With Carcasses of African Swine Fever-Infected Animals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolai Denzin ◽  
Frithjof Helmstaedt ◽  
Carolina Probst ◽  
Franz J. Conraths
Keyword(s):  
Viral Infection ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Wild Boar ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
African Swine Fever ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
Physical And Chemical ◽  
Important Disease

African swine fever (ASF) is a viral infection of pigs and represents a major threat to animal health and trade. Due to the high tenacity of the causative virus also in carcasses of wild boar, contacts of wild boar with infectious carcasses are regarded an important driver of the so-called habitat cycle. The latter is believed to play a major role in maintaining the present ASF situation in wild boar in Europe. Therefore, search campaigns and timely removal and disposal of carcasses are considered important disease control approaches. If timely disposal is not feasible due to logistic reasons, deterrence of wild boar could be a provisionary option. The performance of seven deterrents (physical and chemical) was tested in a forest near Greifswald, Germany. Carcasses as entities of attraction for wild boar were substituted by luring sites. It could be demonstrated that certain physical (LED-Blinkers, aluminum stripes) and chemical (Wildschwein-Stopp™, Hukinol™) deterrents are capable of reducing significantly the odds of wild boar contacts to one third. It is recommended to carry a choice of the aforementioned, reasonable and easy to apply deterrents, when carcass search campaigns are launched in case of an outbreak of ASF in wild boar.

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