RT Report
T1 WIMBOARD: An Operational Eco-Epidemiological Decision-Support Platform: Application to the 2025-26 African Swine Fever Outbreak in Wild Boar in Catalonia
A1 Bosch López, Jaime Alfonso
A1 Ivorra, Benjamín Pierre Paul
A1 Aguilar Vega, Cecilia
A1 Sánchez-Vizcaíno Rodríguez, José Manuel
A1 Ramos Del Olmo, Ángel Manuel
AB African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most consequential transboundary animal diseases affecting both domestic pig production and wild boar populations, particularly in human-modified landscapes, where ecological complexity, delayed detection, and heterogeneous host movements complicate outbreak interpretation and control. In late 2025, the emergence of ASF in wild boar in Catalonia, Spain, created a high-priority peri-urban epidemiological scenario in which surveillance, wildlife ecology, and outbreak management converged under a newly emerging operational challenge: the interpretation of complex transmission dynamics in anthropised environments. In this study, we applied the Wild Integrated Movement Boar Outbreak and Risk Dynamics (WIMBOARD) platform, an operational epidemiological modelling and decision-support system developed within the European VACDIVA project (DOI: 10.3030/862874), to interpret and anticipate the spatio-temporal evolution of the Catalonia outbreak. WIMBOARD integrates experimental epidemiological knowledge, wildlife ecology, landscape connectivity, and scenario-based modelling, including the simulation of applied control measures, to support risk assessment and outbreak management under field conditions. The model outputs revealed a structured and directional epidemic rather than a homogeneous radial spread. Temporal dynamics indicated delayed detectability between infection prevalence and mortality signals, while cumulative risk maps and time-to-infection surfaces identified clear directional asymmetries and differentiated dispersal phases. Although early field observations and model projections indicated an initial southward dispersal signal consistent with actual outbreak detections, north-northwest expansion emerged as the most epidemiologically consequential scenario, reflecting the influence of highly connected ecological sectors with increased potential for regional amplification and long-term persistence. Monthly risk surfaces further showed that infection spread behaved as a moving eco-epidemiological wavefront, allowing the identification of anticipatory surveillance windows before visible mortality became evident. In addition, epidemiological patterns compatible with reduced apparent virulence or prolonged host survival may, under conditions of landscape-mediated transmission, favour more diffuse spatial spread, lower early mortality visibility, and extended persistence of infection pressure over time. Taken together, these results support the interpretation of ASF spread in this peri-urban outbreak as a landscape-mediated epidemiological process shaped by functional connectivity, wildlife urban adaptation, and delayed detection. This study also introduces and operationalises the concept of landscape-mediated epidemiological modulation to explain how fragmented urban-agro-natural mosaics can alter transmission structure, mortality visibility, and surveillance performance. Beyond the Catalonia case, WIMBOARD is presented not simply as a theoretical model, but as an already operational European decision-support tool for risk assessment and ASF outbreak management, capable of comparative scenario exploration and adaptable to other geographic settings and wildlife-mediated disease systems. WIMBOARD translates eco-epidemiological complexity into operational spatial intelligence for anticipatory wildlife disease management.
YR 2026
FD 2026
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/134365
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/134365
LA eng
NO European Comission
NO Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
DS Docta Complutense
RD 19 may 2026