Implementation of an Early Warning System for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza
Ongoing project (2022-2025)
The Bird Flu Radar (GUI) has been developed for EFSA as part of the project named ‘Implementation of an Early Warning System for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza’ (NP/EFSA/BIOHAW/2022/01).
The purpose of this project is to develop a spatiotemporal risk assessment to estimate the probability of HPAI outbreaks in the wild bird population by spatiotemporal unit across Europe. After the successful implementation of a pilot risk assessment model, a follow up project has been implemented to update the spatiotemporal risk assessment model in real time with new results being displayed every Monday morning based on the latest HPAI outbreaks (H5 and H7) reported in wild birds in Europe.
This project is being conducted in collaboration with four partners: Sovon, the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology coordinates the project, The Catalan Ornithological Institute (ICO) used citizen data on abundance and distribution of wild birds available in the EuroBirdPortal (EBP) to estimate the expected relative abundance of 12 wild bird species across Europe, and The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) used data from EURING DataBank to provide estimates for long-distance movements of migratory populations and short-distance dispersal models of the same 12 wild bird species in Europe.
Ausvet Europe developed the spatiotemporal risk assessment model using as input the data provided by ICO and BTO.
A full description of the spatiotemporal risk assessment model is available in the EFSA External Scientific Report published in 2022 (here), but the model will be regularly updated until the end of the project planned in 2025.
Main project outcomes
- EFSA external Scientific report 2022 – development of a prototype early warning system for avian influenza in the EU based on risk-mapping https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2022.EN-7762
- Short training video explaining how the model works https://euring.org/migration-mapping/bird-flu-radar
- Bird Flu Radar updated on a weekly basis based on the latest HPAI outbreaks reported in wild birds in Europe https://app.bto.org/mmt/avian_influenza_map/avian_influenza_map.jsp
