Investigating the Landscapes of Infectious Disease through Fieldwork, Data and Computation
Alert-level zones with barriers to high-impact spillover. All three zones represent landscapes of high anthropogenic pressure intersecting with high biodiversity, and thus all three zones indicate potential for impactful spillover. Interventions are suggested for each zone and represent urgent needs specific to each landscape to block high-impact spillover. Habitat conservation and animal health surveillance are beneficial strategies common to all zones, whereas the red zone additionally requires strengthened health systems and surveillance in humans. The more upstream the strategy, the “closer” it is to the landscape and thus the broader the downstream window of impact (depicted by larger font size). Strategies targeting the transportation hubs alone (A) are the most downstream, i.e. closest to points of global dissemination, and thus provide a narrow window of impact with a permeable barrier from the point of spillover in the landscape to the point of dissemination in the hub. However, strategies targeting transportation hubs that are integrated with upstream forms of surveillance (B) can strengthen the downstream intervention ultimately contributing to an impermeable barrier from the point of spillover to the point of dissemination. The exclusion of transportation hubs from intervention strategies (C) is ill-advised, since their close proximity to landscapes of impactful spillover should compel their involvement as a critical last line of defense against global dissemination.