A Research Retrospective
As the end of the project draws near, it is appropriate to highlight team members’ contributions to the outputs of the ADBCAP. The team’s accomplishments closely align with the following objectives:
- To better understand the roles of information and communication methods on risk perception and how factors such as economic and social concerns influence people to adopt or engage in biosecurity strategies.
- To better visualize the impact of human behaviors on disease spread in production systems.
- To create new educational tools for the next generation to learn about biosecurity.
Interactions with private and public sector stakeholders informed the development of our work. The team has deployed innovative interviews, surveys, and “serious games” (or digital field experiments) to gather data.
We have integrated epidemiological information, human risk perception and socio-economic influences into first-of-their-kind, agent-based models to explore how changing human behaviors affect disease spread dynamics.
The research outputs have identified several key areas relevant to producers, industry stakeholders and policy makers, and these have been shared through peer reviewed and lay publications, conference proceedings, meetings, and workshops nationally and internationally.
Interactive online and hands-on activities were developed for youth audiences to learn about biosecurity, and a new website focused on farm biosecurity was launched. We developed evaluation tools to gauge the impact of the online educational modules. Innovations in research design and outreach typified the project.
Recent publications and presentations are listed in this newsletter and on the project website. Recordings of presentations at our project symposium held in May 2019 are also available on the website.
This is the last newsletter produced by the ADBCAP, but the project website will be maintained until the year 2026.