New research could result in better surveillance to predict outbreaks and reduce the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the face of a changing global climate.
“The importance of climate change, the importance of the environment and the environmental impact on the biology and spread of the virus are things we haven’t taken a good look at,” said Dr. Shayan Sharif, professor, Department of Pathobiology, University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College.
“Our project is just one example of having a multi-disciplinary approach towards targeting an issue that is highly complicated, highly complex and multi-faceted.”
Wild birds can be a major source of disease spread in commercial poultry, especially when it comes to HPAI. The current HPAI outbreak has impacted more than 80 million layers, broilers and turkeys in the U.S.
“You have species that are migrating into new territories and, as a result of that, they are exposed to more and more viruses, like avian influenza. That could also lead to these viruses undergoing mutations because they’re evolving and become more pathogenic or transmissible,” Sharif added.
Machine learning, AI for better surveillance
As a part of the project, Rozita Dara, associate professor, School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, will work to develop a new surveillance tool to predict HPAI outbreaks.
The tool will integrate data from social media, satellite images and other sources with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to “help emergency responders, poultry industry decision-makers and epidemiologists to be able to use the data for either monitoring of an outbreak based on historical information or for prediction hopefully in the future,” Dara explained.
Sharif and Dara is part of a scientific research team that feature scientists from the University of Guelph and University of Toronto working on the project, funded by the AgriScience Program – Clusters Component, an initiative under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP): a five-year, federal-provincial-territorial initiative to strengthen competitiveness, innovation and resiliency of Canada’s agriculture, agri‐food and agri‐based products sector.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
