Examples of Disease Forecasting Systems
Forecasting systems may use one of several parameters in order to work out disease risk, or a combination of factors. One of the first forecasting systems designed was for Stewart's Wilt and based on winter temperature index as low temperatures would kill the vector of the disease so there would be no outbreak. An example of a multiple disease/pest forecasting system is the EPIdemiology, PREdiction, and PREvention (EPIPRE) system developed in the Netherlands for winter wheat that focused on multiple pathogens. USPEST.org graphs risks of various plants diseases based on weather forecasts with hourly resolution of leaf wetness. Forecasting models are often based on a relationship like simple linear regression where x is used to predict y. Other relationships can be modelled using population growth curves. The growth curve that is used will depend on the nature of the epidemic. Polycyclic epidemics such as potato late blight are usually best modelled by using the logistic model, whereas monocyclic epidemics may be best modelled using the monomolecular model. Correct choice of a model is essential for a disease forecasting system to be useful.
Plant disease forecasting models must be thoroughly tested and validated after being developed. Interest has arisen lately in model validation through the quantification of the economic costs of false positives and false negatives, where disease prevention measures may be used when unnecessary or not applied when needed respectively. The costs of these two types of errors need to be weighed carefully before deciding to use a disease forecasting system.
Read more about this topic: Plant Disease Forecasting
Famous quotes containing the words examples of, examples, disease and/or systems:
“There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring ‘em all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifry.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)