Parametric Uncertainty in Intra-Herd Foot-and-Mouth Disease Epidemiological Models

Introduction The rapid transmission and poor control policy response during recent Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks have underscored the need for better decision support tools. At the foundation of these decision support tools are the epidemiological models that are parameterized with the data generated from pathogenesis studies of the FMD virus that contain contact transmission data. These values being used to parameterize the model, contrary to assumption, contain a significant amount of uncertainty, which propagates throughout the model affecting output. To understand how parametric uncertainty might affect output, a variety of disease transmission parameters were generated from contact transmission data and parameterized to an intra-herd model.