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A Review of Network Analysis Terminology and its Application to Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Modelling and Policy Development
Author(s) -
Dubé C.,
Ribble C.,
Kelton D.,
McNab B.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
transboundary and emerging diseases
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.392
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1865-1682
pISSN - 1865-1674
DOI - 10.1111/j.1865-1682.2008.01064.x
Subject(s) - livestock , terminology , foot and mouth disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , relevance (law) , computer science , risk analysis (engineering) , network analysis , social network analysis , disease , data science , business , engineering , medicine , biology , ecology , political science , world wide web , philosophy , linguistics , electrical engineering , pathology , virology , outbreak , social media , law
Summary Livestock movements are important in spreading infectious diseases and many countries have developed regulations that require farmers to report livestock movements to authorities. This has led to the availability of large amounts of data for analysis and inclusion in computer simulation models developed to support policy formulation. Social network analysis has become increasingly popular to study and characterize the networks resulting from the movement of livestock from farm‐to‐farm and through other types of livestock operations. Network analysis is a powerful tool that allows one to study the relationships created among these operations, providing information on the role that they play in acquiring and spreading infectious diseases, information that is not readily available from more traditional livestock movement studies. Recent advances in the study of real‐world complex networks are now being applied to veterinary epidemiology and infectious disease modelling and control. A review of the principles of network analysis and of the relevance of various complex network theories to infectious disease modelling and control is presented in this paper.