Australia has four national priority pest lists in the marine, animal, plant and environmental disciplines. These lists identify pests that are not yet present in Australia but could severely impact industries and food security if they were to establish. Although these priority pests are not the only threats of concern, they highlight the types of risks Australia faces.
The primary purpose of these lists is to raise awareness of pest and disease risks and to provide a national focus for protecting Australia’s plant health. Prioritising pests within these lists, as well as determining which preparedness activities should be funded requires the integration of diverse expert opinions while also relying on scientific literature. This important work will support a broad range of stakeholders across Australia, from technical experts to policymakers.
Aim: This project aims to support Australia’s preparedness for an emergency response to exotic plant pests and diseases by developing robust and scientifically valid models for ranking priority pest and diseases and preparedness activities. This may include:
- Statistical prioritisation: Consider data available for priority pests and diseases to then develop a real-time risk analysis model which will support ranking exotic plant pests and diseases of concern to prioritise funding for preparedness.
- Activity prioritisation: Create a framework to assess which preparedness activities offer the highest return on investment to enable prioritisation for funding bodies.
- Review of impact: Develop a generic model to evaluate the economic, environmental and social/political consequences of potential pest invasion which can be used by policy makers and emergency response technical advisory committee members to facilitate decision-making.
Meet the PhD student for this project
Jessica Kriticos
My name is Jessica Kriticos, and I’m a PhD student researching quantitative models to rank priority plant pests and diseases and their preparedness activities in the Australian context.
My background is in applying ecology and environmental science to biosecurity challenges, with my previous research focusing on the ecological modelling of global pest species.
Outside of research, I enjoy bouldering, hiking, and learning Greek.
Supervisors and advisors
Professor Eric Stone, The Australian National University.
Dr Jo Lee and Liesl Taylor, Australian government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Canberra.
Approach
The approach to this project may include:
- Cross-disciplinary literature review: Essential for understanding existing models, data gaps and current methodologies.
- Stakeholder engagement to understand data inputs
- Consideration of how existing models could support a prioritisation pest/disease and funding modelling approach.
- Supervised learning through statistical models and/or machine learning: Machine learning could enhance the model’s predictive capabilities
- Hybrid models: Combining qualitative and quantitative methods
- Data engineering and curation: Ensuring reliability of input data
Want to know more? Email jessica.kriticos@anu.edu.au.