Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Time: 16:10-17:00

venue: Mathematics Building Room 527

Speaker:  Prof. Hong-Dar Isaac Wu (Department of Applied Mathematics, National Chung Hsing University)

Title: Featuring the Spatiotemporal Aggregation of Avian Influenza Virus (AIV) Outbreaks in Taiwan

Infectious diseases often exhibit spatial and temporal clustering. We applied the Knox test and likelihood ratio statistics to identify spatiotemporal clusters. By comparing time-varying second-order aggregation with the standard deviational ellipse, we characterized the dynamic patterns of disease transmission. Because non-endemic avian influenza virus (AIV) outbreaks may be associated with introductions by wild birds, we used data from the citizen scientists eBird database to explore bird distributions and assess their potential role in introducing AIV to poultry farms.

First, an autoregressive logistic model was used to estimate the occupancy probability of selected migratory wild bird species while accounting for terrestrial factors through multivariate adjustment. Second, a matched-pair study design combined with bootstrap resampling was employed to assess the risk posed by each species for introducing AIV using propensity score matching. Ten migratory bird species were identified as having non-negligible introduction risks. Finally, an additive–multiplicative model was used to generate a risk map, which served as a guide for targeted surveillance of highly pathogenic influenza (HPI) outbreaks.