A Study of Cattle Movements in Northern Ireland for 2005-2015 using Social Network Analysis.

Emma Brown, A.H. Marshall, Hannah Mitchell, Andrew Byrne

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Animal movements can be represented as a network of herds connected by the trade of animals. Endemic livestock diseases, like Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) in Northern Ireland (NI), could be facilitated through the networks’ structure via the movement of infected animals. Social network analysis assesses movements by calculating network metrics and provides insight into the influence of movements. This method can also be used to evaluate movement restrictions by creating new networks based on changes to the original ones; this study assessed the effect of node removal, either randomly or selectively by considering each nodes’ influence. The results suggest that removing nodes based on their influence was more effective than random removal in splitting the networks into many more components. However, the success of targeting nodes was limited due to the connectivity of farms across NI, and suggests that disease control strategies should account for this limitation when being applied to animal movements.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2018
EventSVEPM Conference & Annual General Meeting of the Society - Tallinn, Estonia
Duration: 21 Mar 201823 Mar 2018
https://www.svepm2018.org/welcome/

Conference

ConferenceSVEPM Conference & Annual General Meeting of the Society
Country/TerritoryEstonia
City Tallinn
Period21/03/201823/03/2018
Internet address

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