Multi-criteria decision making to evaluate quarantine disease control strategies

Decision making in controlling quarantine diseases is a complex, conflicting Process, characterized by a mixture of epidemiological, economic and social-ethical value judgments. Policy makers have to integrate these aspects in a consistent and transparent manner in their decision making. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a tool that is capable of supporting this integration. This paper gives a general overview of available MCDM techniques and provides an application to illustrate the potential support of MCDM in choosing the control strategy that best meets all of these conflicting judgments. In the application, various strategies to control animal quarantine diseases (such as Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), Classical Swine Fever (CSF) and Avian Influenza (AI)) were ordered according to the preferences of various stakeholders. Considering the similarity in the complexity of controlling quarantine diseases this 'animal' application provides a good illustration of the potential use of the MCDM evaluation technique within plant disease control.