The potential for targeted surveillance of live fish movements in Scotland

Citation

Green D, Werkman M & Munro LA (2012) The potential for targeted surveillance of live fish movements in Scotland. Journal of Fish Diseases, 35 (1), pp. 29-37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2761.2011.01321.x

Abstract
The network structure of the movements of live fish in the Scottish aquaculture industry has recently been demonstrated for 2003. In this paper, we enlarge this analysis to a longer three-year period from 2002 to 2004, the new data allowing complete coverage of at least one production cycle. The resulting network contains slightly more sites than that for a single year, and is denser with more arcs (directed site-to-site connections) present, but otherwise features recognisable in the one-year network are still recognisable in the three-year network. Arc removal algorithms (a proxy for targeted surveillance) were identified that could successfully reduce the portion of the network reachable from a node (a proxy for potential epidemic size) by approximately one third by removing as few as four arcs. This results from the high centrality of particular nodes and arcs. A strong community structure was identified in the network, corresponding with species farmed but only weakly geographical, with a high proportion of arcs occurring between management areas and catchments.

Keywords
Aquaculture; Graph; Network; Transmission; Fishes Diseases; Fishes Parasites.

Journal
Journal of Fish Diseases: Volume 35, Issue 1