title: Quantifying experts' uncertainty about the future cost of exotic diseases.
abstract: Since the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of 2001 in the United Kingdom, there has been debate about the sharing, between government and industry, both the costs of livestock disease outbreaks and responsibility for the decisions that give rise to them. As part of a consultation into the formation of a new body to manage livestock diseases, government veterinarians and economists produced estimates of the average annual costs for a number of exotic infectious diseases. In this article, we demonstrate how the government experts were helped to quantify their uncertainties about the cost estimates using formal expert elicitation techniques. This has enabled the decisionmakers to have a greater appreciation of government experts' uncertainty in this policy area.
authors: School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. j.p.gosling@leeds.ac.uk
authors: John Paul
authors: JP
authors: Gosling
authors: Andy
authors: A
authors: Hart
authors: David C
authors: DC
authors: Mouat
authors: Mirzet
authors: M
authors: Sabirovic
authors: Simon
authors: S
authors: Scanlan
authors: Alick
authors: A
authors: Simmons
mesh_terms: D003141:Communicable Diseases; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D006801:Humans; D035501:Uncertainty; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology