Assessing the Outbreak Risk of Epidemics Using Fuzzy Evidential Reasoning

While epidemic diseases (EDs) continue to pose a challenging risk that endangers public health, they tend to attract little attention regarding risk assessment in the current literature. Tackling ED risks becomes complicated when the needed advanced techniques designed to assess them are lacking. 

In this study, an adapted fuzzy evidence reasoning method is proposed to recognize the quantitative analysis of ED outbreak risk assessment (EDRA) with high uncertainty in risk data. This was pursued by establishing the outbreak risk evaluation system of epidemics covering the entire epidemic developing process, combining both qualitative and quantitative analysis in the fields of epidemic risk evaluation, and collecting substantial first-hand data by reviewing transaction data and interviewing the frontier experts and policymakers from Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Chinese National Medical Products Administration. 

In effect, this study provides useful insights for the regulatory bodies to understand the risk levels of different EDs in a quantitative manner and the sensitivity of various EDs to the identified risk factors for their effective control. The proposed method also provides a potential tool for assessing the outbreak risk of COVID-19. 

The full article can be found on the Risk Analysis journal website at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.13730.