Moving infected animals and sharing contaminated vehicles are considered as the most potent ways for between-farm disease transmission. The objective of this study is to develop a network-based simulation model to investigate the effects of direct contact, indirect contact, and their combination on a hypothetical foot-and-mouth disease spreading between beef-cattle farms in southwest Kansas, US, and explore the effect of different types of information-sharing networks on preventing the disease spreading. Based on synthetic cattle and truck movement data in southwest Kansas, we build a farm-level contact network with three layers, a cattle movement layer (direct contact), a truck movement layer (indirect contact), and an information-sharing layer. Through scenario analyses, we compare the disease transmission dynamics, the distribution of outbreak epidemic size, and the disease breakout percentage of different contact structures -- only direct contact, only indirect contact, and their combination. In addition, we evaluate different types of information sharing methods by comparing the epidemic size and the estimated economic loss. Simulation results show that neither direct contact nor indirect contact individually can result in a massive outbreak of the disease, but their combination plays a significant role. Additionally, we detect different probabilities of disease outbreaks by starting the simulations at different farms; starting at some farms with high capacity increases the probability of disease outbreaks. Three different information sharing-networks are developed and found effective in preventing the disease from spreading and reducing the economic loss. The information-sharing layer based on trading records has the best performance when compared with a random network and a geographic network.

中文翻译：

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了解联系结构和信息共享对肉牛场之间口蹄疫传播的影响

移动被感染的动物和共享被污染的车辆被认为是农场间疾病传播的最有效方法。这项研究的目的是建立一个基于网络的模拟模型，以研究直接接触，间接接触及其组合对美国西南部堪萨斯州和美国西南部肉牛场之间假想的口蹄疫传播的影响。探索不同类型的信息共享网络对预防疾病传播的影响。基于堪萨斯州西南部的人工牛和卡车运动合成数据，我们建立了一个农场级别的接触网络，该网络分为三层，即牛运动层（直接接触），卡车运动层（间接接触）和信息共享层。通过情景分析，我们比较了疾病传播动态，暴发流行规模的分布以及不同接触结构的疾病暴发百分比-仅直接接触，仅间接接触及其组合。此外，我们通过比较疫情规模和估计的经济损失来评估不同类型的信息共享方法。模拟结果表明，无论是直接接触还是间接接触都不会导致大规模的疾病暴发，但是它们的结合起着重要的作用。此外，我们通过在不同的农场开始模拟来检测疾病爆发的不同可能性；从一些高产猪场开始，增加了疾病暴发的可能性。建立了三个不同的信息共享网络，发现它们可以有效防止疾病传播并减少经济损失。