Inferring livestock movement networks from archived data to support infectious disease control in developing countries

Abstract The use of network analysis to support livestock disease control in low middle-income countries (LMICs) has historically been hampered by the cost of generating empirical data in the absence of animal movement recording schemes. To fill this gap, methods which exploit freely available demographic and archived molecular data can be used to generate livestock networks based on gravity and phylogeographic modelling techniques, respectively. However, questions remain on the performance of these methods in capturing the topology of empirical networks. Here, we compare output from these network methodologies to a network constructed from either empirical data or randomly generated data. To facilitate this comparison, the spread of infectious diseases was simulated, it is this evaluation that demonstrates their potential utility to inform robust livestock disease control strategies. The molecular network was the closest approximation to the empirical network, both in relation to topological and epidemic characteristics, whereas size of epidemics in the gravity network tended to be larger, better agreement across all three networks was observed when; a) total nodes infected, b) percentage infection take off were compared. These methods consistently identified the same important animal movement and trade hotspots as the empirical networks. We therefore consider this proof-of-concept that demographic data such as censuses and archived molecular data could be repurposed to inform livestock disease management in LMICs. Author summary Live animal movements in Africa represent a significant risk of transmission and spread of infectious diseases in livestock populations, and therefore, have direct implications on the food security of the continent. Here we explore the potential utility of available data to support control strategies, by comparing movement networks inferred from such data i.e. census and pathogen molecular data using gravity modelling and phylogeography respectively. Their utility is evaluated by comparing their topology and disease spread characteristics to empirical live animal movement. Based on our results, we posit that archived data can be repurposed to support infectious disease control on the African continent.