Alin Morariu (Lancaster University)

Speaker: Alin Morariu (Lancaster University)
Title: Joint epidemiological and ecological modelling of high pathogenic avian influenza in England
Abstract: Highly pathogenic avian influenza poses a significant threat to the poultry industry, driving substantial economic losses and carrying the risk of zoonotic spillover. A central challenge in mitigating these impacts is identifying the primary source of transmission. We develop a continuous-time, individual-level model that separates wild bird spillover from farm-to-farm transmission to determine the main driver of infection. A spatial Gaussian process is jointly estimated to produce a latent infection risk surface to partition the risk. The model is calibrated to outbreak data and passive wild bird surveillance data using a bespoke Bayesian inference scheme. Inference employs a MCMC algorithm which combines parameter estimation and data augmentation kernels. The model and inference algorithm are implemented in gemlib to facilitate code reusability and reduce runtimes.