Automatic Generation of Global Agent-based Model of Migratory Waterfowl for Epidemiological Analysis of Avian Influenza and Other Zoonoic Diseases

Seasonal migration of waterfowl, in which avian influenza viruses are enzootic, plays a strong role in the ecology of the disease and has been implicated in several zoonotic epidemics and pandemics. Recent investigations have established that with just 1 mutation current avian influenza viral strains gain the ability to be readily transmitted between humans. These investigations further motivate the need for detailed analysis, in addition to satellite surveillance, of migratory patterns and its influence on the ecology of the disease to aid design and assessment of prophylaxis and containment strategies for emergent epidemics. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel methodology for generating a global agent-based stochastic epidemiological model involving detailed migratory patterns of waterfowl. The methodology transforms Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data containing global distribution of various species of waterfowl to generate metapopulation for agents that model collocated flocks of birds. Generic migratory flyways are suitably adapted to model migratory flyways for each waterfowl metapopulation. Migratory characteristics of various species are used to determine temporal attributes for the flyways. The resulting data is generated in XML format compatible with our simulation-based epidemiological analysis environment called SEARUMS. Case studies conducted using SEARUMS and the generated models for high-risk waterfowl species indicate good correlation between simulated and observed viral dispersion patterns, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.