title: Quantifying the Value of Perfect Information in Emergency Vaccination Campaigns.
abstract: Foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in non-endemic countries can lead to large economic costs and livestock losses but the use of vaccination has been contentious, partly due to uncertainty about emergency FMD vaccination. Value of information methods can be applied to disease outbreak problems such as FMD in order to investigate the performance improvement from resolving uncertainties. Here we calculate the expected value of resolving uncertainty about vaccine efficacy, time delay to immunity after vaccination and daily vaccination capacity for a hypothetical FMD outbreak in the UK. If it were possible to resolve all uncertainty prior to the introduction of control, we could expect savings of £55 million in outbreak cost, 221,900 livestock culled and 4.3 days of outbreak duration. All vaccination strategies were found to be preferable to a culling only strategy. However, the optimal vaccination radius was found to be highly dependent upon vaccination capacity for all management objectives. We calculate that by resolving the uncertainty surrounding vaccination capacity we would expect to return over 85% of the above savings, regardless of management objective. It may be possible to resolve uncertainty about daily vaccination capacity before an outbreak, and this would enable decision makers to select the optimal control action via careful contingency planning.
authors.affiliation: School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, Leicestershire, United Kingdom.|School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Naomi V
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8934-6301
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Bradbury
authors.affiliation: School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, Leicestershire, United Kingdom.|School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.|Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: William J M
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Probert
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Department of Biology, Eberly College of Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.|Department of Biology and Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, 208 Mueller Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Katriona
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shea
authors.affiliation: US Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8081-536X
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Runge
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Fonnesbeck
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.|Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Matt J
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4639-4765
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Keeling
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Department of Biology, Eberly College of Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.|Department of Biology and Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, 208 Mueller Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Ferrari
authors.affiliation: School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, Leicestershire, United Kingdom.|School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.|Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Tildesley
mesh_terms: D065136:Animal Culling / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000818:Animals; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000191:economics*; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005536:Foot-and-Mouth Disease / Q000191:economics* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017589:Immunization Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D032541:Mass Vaccination / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods; D015995:Prevalence; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology; D014765:Viral Vaccines / Q000191:economics / Q000627:therapeutic use
chemical_list: D014765:Viral Vaccines