Epidemiological simulation modeling and spatial analysis for foot-and-mouth disease control strategies: a comprehensive review

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is one of the most serious transboundary, contagious viral diseases of cloven-hoofed livestock, because it can spread rapidly with high morbidity rates when introduced into disease-free herds or areas. Epidemiological simulation modeling can be developed to study the hypothetical spread of FMD and to evaluate potential disease control strategies that can be implemented to decrease the impact of an outbreak or to eradicate the virus from an area. Spatial analysis, a study of the distributions of events in space, can be applied to an area to investigate the spread of animal disease. Hypothetical FMD outbreaks can be spatially analyzed to evaluate the effect of the event under different control strategies. The main objective of this paper is to review FMD-related articles on FMD epidemiology, epidemiological simulation modeling and spatial analysis with the focus on disease control. This review will contribute to the development of models used to simulate FMD outbreaks under various control strategies, and to the application of spatial analysis to assess the outcome of FMD spread and its control.