The benefits and costs of biosecurity

This EERH project on biosecurity seeks to determine how and to what extent resources should be used to monitor, prevent and manage potential incursions of exotic pests and diseases, especially those that can bring substantial (occasionally catastrophic) damage to the environment and local habitat. In this regard it attemptsto answer the question: how much should be spent on border quarantine and local surveillance activities, including cost effective containment and eradication programs that balance all relevant costs and benefits for those pets already in Australia.   

The first stage of this project has been to develop ‘jump-diffusion’ models of pest spread and control, allowing for normal random spread patters given an incursion, along with large jumps in environmental state variables. The first two applications –– used to get the modeling framework running, tested and calibrated –– only have indirect environmental impacts: (1) optimal border quarantine measures against an Ovine John’s incursion to sheep in Western Australia, and (2) optimal surveillance against a potential Papua fruit fly incursion in Queensland.

Using this modeling context, the last two applications in the project will tackle the issue of recreational and environmental costs and benefits head on: (1) the control and local surveillance against red imported fire ants in Queensland, and (2) the eradication (along with preventing their spread to the rest of the Mainland) of crazy ants on Christmas Island. Professor John Rolfe at Central Queensland University, and his team, will help establish these recreational and environmental values, and when combined with the ‘jump-diffusion’ modeling context will provide a world-class example of how to model, cost and control the potential entry of these harmful pests and their effects on the environment.

Presentations:

• Global Health Security, John Curtin School of Medicine, ANU February 2, 2010
• Global Biosecurity 2010, Brisbane 1 March 2010
• Outlook 2010, ABARE, Canberra, March 2, 2010
• ACBEE Presentation - The Economics of Biosecurity: Risk, Returns, Quarantine and Surveillance [PDF, 302KB]

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