Managing complexity: Simplifying assumptions of foot-and-mouth disease models for swine.
- Authors:
- A C Kinsley,
- K VanderWaal,
- M E Craft,
- R B Morrison,
- A M Perez
Transbound Emerg Dis 2018 Apr 23. Epub 2018 Apr 23.
Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA.
Compartmental models have often been used to test the effectiveness and efficiency of alternative control strategies to mitigate the spread of infectious animal diseases. A fundamental principle of epidemiological modelling is that models should start as simple as possible and become as complex as needed. The simplest version of a compartmental model assumes that the population is closed, void of births and deaths and that this closed population mixes homogeneously, meaning that each infected individual has an equal probability of coming into contact with each susceptible individual in the population. Read More