Defensible resource allocation for plant health surveillance

Project ID: 1608A
CEBRA Project Leader: Tom Kompas
DAWR Sponsor: Marion Healy
DAWR Project Leader: Susie Collins, Ranjith Subasinghe
DAWR Division: Plant Division
MPI Project Manager: N/A
Collaborators: N/A

The Department plays a major role in surveying for early detection of high impact exotic pests along the biosecurity continuum (n.b. pre-border surveillance is focused on near neighbours). Efficient and defensible allocation of increasingly scarce surveillance resources across all risk areas presents a significant challenge for the Department.

This project is based on the requirements for allocation of resources across surveillance activities in high-risk locations along the continuum within a set budget. This project, therefore, seeks to address the issue of how to allocate resources across surveillance activities within a set budget (i.e. the portfolio investment approach); and, to identify risk locations to allocate resources for specific surveillance (i.e. possible hotspots).

Application of this type of approach to plant health surveillance would be beneficial to ensure the Department’s investment in plant health surveillance activities across the continuum is cost-effective and provides the best return. However the model – developed under preceding CEBRA projects and designed to forecast and map high risk areas of potential incursions of invasive plant pest species in Australia based on likelihood of their establishment and spread – is quite complex and there are significant data requirements. These prevent the routine use of the model, without further development, as in this proposed project. The project will finalise the model and investigate integration with the portfolio investment model wherever possible.

Research program

Data and Information

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