SAFOSO is part of the European consortium of 4 partners (CH, UK, IT, ES) that will, for the next 3 years, implement the “Development of a spatial risk assessment framework for assessing exotic disease incursion and spread through Europe” SPARE project.

This is an ANIHWA project that started in April 2015 and is led by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA, UK).

The primary aim of the project is to develop a framework to provide rapid access to and use of available metadata on trade and human-animal contact structures to identify pathways of potential risk of incursion and/or spread for different mechanisms of disease transmission.

This framework will provide invaluable information for risk assessors in the first instances of a disease outbreak where typically information on imports and routes of entry and potential for spread is undertaken on a case-by-case basis.

SAFOSO team members Marco De Nardi and Katharina Stärk lead two work-packages which will 1) develop a catalogue of risk-based biosecurity measures and surveillance scenarios to provide guidance for optimal risk mitigation and will 2) provide frameworks and protocols to facilitate rapid sharing and exchange of relevant information and to enhance communication between data owners as well as risk managers.