Welcome

MINTRISK is a Method for INTegrated RISK assessment of vector-borne animal diseases, which was developed jointly by Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) and Wageningen Economic Research (WEcR), both part of Wageningen University and Research.

The MINTRISK tool can be used for risk assessment of vector-borne diseases of livestock and pets, where a vector-borne disease is defined as a disease for which arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, midges, ticks and (sand)flies, are the primary transmission route.

MINRISK is a semi-quantitative calculation tool based on the FEVER framework (FEVER = Framework to assess Emerging VEctor-borne disease Risks for livestock) and uses the same steps to evaluate the introduction risk of vector-borne animal diseases, i.e. (1) entry (2) transmission, (3) establishment, (4) extent of spread, (5) persistence and (6) impact. More information on these steps is available from De Vos et al., 2012. Questions in MINTRISK have been numbered based on the FEVER framework.

Input into MINTRISK is entered by scoring a set of questions for each step, choosing from qualitative answer categories with accompanying quantitative explanation. For each question, the risk assessor can indicate his/her uncertainty in answering the question. The uncertainty is accounted for in the model calculations. If the risk assessor has precise quantitative information for one or more questions, this can be entered by choosing the option “own value”.

The questions considering the introduction pathways need to be answered for each pathway separately. The risk assessor can enter multiple pathways, but only 3 pathways can be selected for inclusion in the final risk assessment. Pathways can be classified as commodity, host animal, vector or human. If pathways originate from regions that have different epidemiological characteristics for the vector-borne disease (e.g. endemic presence versus sporadic epidemics, or huge differences in observed prevalences), the same pathway can be entered repeatedly to account for the different risk posed by these regions. To reduce the workload for this part of the risk assessment, answers can be copied from one pathway to another.

The same epidemiological unit (animal/herd/flock) should be used when assessing the transmission, extent of spread and impact of disease. The impact assessment considers economic, socio-ethical and environmental consequences. However, the outcome for the overall risk is based on economic impact only. Whereas some questions for the economic impact are answered at a national/regional level, other questions need to be answered on the animal/herd/flock level. The answers to the latter questions are linked with the calculated epidemic size to estimate the total economic impact. For more information on how to use MINTRISK and a glossary of frequently used terms see Help and User manual

An account for MINTRISK can be obtained by filling in a registration form. This allows for entering your own risk assessment and calculating and saving the results. Responsibility for results obtained by using MINTRISK is solely with the user. WUR does not take any liability for results generated by external users of MINTRISK.

For further information see Contact.