The BioSIRT log (BLog) June 2009

Collaboration

QLD and WA declared Emergency Ready.

The Primary Industries Ministerial Council (PMIC) met on 21 May 2009 and approved funding for the BioSIRT application for the next three years. The Council agreed on the funding to support a nationally consistent approach to information management, and for the ongoing maintenance and development of the BioSIRT application for emergency responses.

Western Australia held an Animal Health Veterinary Investigations training course for DAFWA animal health staff. The course included familiarisation on a Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) workspace in BioSIRT looking at information Plows. This was augmented by reviewing reporting functionality in the Classical Swine Fever (CSF) workspace.

Discussion centered on resourcing requirements for data capture and technical details of the FMD workspace. The resourcing requirements will be followed up with a specific exercise scheduled later in 2009.

Consistency

Tasmania is working on an emergency response template for Abalone Viral Ganglioneuritis (AVG).

AVG is caused by a herpes]like virus that affects the nervous system of abalone (blacklip and greenlip). The virus is highly pathogenic, and death is certain following infection.

Clinical signs of disease include: swollen and protruding mouth parts, reduced activity of the pedal muscle, with edges of the foot curling inwards exposing the shell.  Importantly disease may still be present in the absence of any clinical signs.

Abalone mucus is thought to be the main vector by which the disease can spread. The virus survives only a short time in the water so the most likely method of disease spread is direct contact with infected abalone (including offal, mucus, shells, contaminated Pishing equipment or people).

Apart from environmental consequences, outbreaks of AVG can impact on the economy and recreational opportunities.  The virus has been reported in Victoria and Tasmania.

The Karnal Bunt (KBU) template has been finalised and approved by the NBSC. The KBU template is now available on the National BioSIRT Reference Library.

Nominations are being sought for expert representatives for Standards Committee Working Groups (SWGs). A team leader for each SWG will be appointed when nominations are finalised. The first SWG workshop will be held in Canberra on 9 July for team leaders. The relevant templates to be developed by the SWGs are listed below.

Category	Animal	Plant	Aquatic
Disease	CSF	KBU	Abalone Viral Ganglio-neuritis
Disease with vector	Bluetongue	Huanlongbing	White Spot
Disease pest	Varroa Mite	Khapra Beetle	Asian Green Mussel
Pest species	Asian Honey Bee	Branched Broom Rape	Chinese Mitten Crab

PDA-Assisted Surveillance Project

Under the Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity (CRCNPB) project, software
has been developed to capture information associated with surveillance activities. The project aims to pilot the use of the PDAs through the deployment of an urban surveillance application and targeted post harvest / grain storage surveillance. PDAs are designed to be robust in the field and have suitable memory / processing capability, barcoding and GIS / GPS compatibility.

The field-based digital interface provides a national system for rapid, validated and secure plant
biosecurity surveillance data capture. Work is commencing on the data collected to be aggregated into BioSIRT with the longer term aim at directly interfacing with BioSIRT.

The Application

Version1.2 of BioSIRT was released on 3 June, 2009.

Enhancements include the ability to filter and sort on summaries, then select the set of AOIs found for later use in maps and reports; AOI image storage for use in reports; summary view data export to spreadsheet format; a new ability to filter on custom fields; an ability to extend footer size on Observation and Sample footers and a new ability to move AOIs between zones and control centres.

Performance testing is an important part of checking the performance of BioSIRT as new versions are developed. It involves testing the application to establish a baseline level of performance for speed and multi]user access on a standard set of workspace data.

This standard set of data is then run against new versions of the application, with any new functionality, and checked to ensure any application performance change is acceptable.

NCT is currently using a standard BioSIRT environment, to IEFS speciPication, to establish baseline levels. Future testing will be executed in this same environment.

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Training

The Training Server has been loaded with training templates and was used for its Pirst training sessions in May.

Kymme Hoadley and Peter Frecklington from the NCT got their feet wet delivering National Administrator Training in Brisbane. Ten new administrators from Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, collectively, attended training on 19-21 May 2009.

Positive feedback was received from the trainees.

"Great materials and presentation"

"Cleared up all my questions"

"Opportunities to interact with the templates"

83% agreed User Training "met their expectations"

Coming Events...

The next scheduled National Administrator Training will be held at the NSW DPI offices in Cronulla, Sydney on 15-17 September 2009.

BioSIRT's current position on...

National Livestock Identification Scheme (NLIS)

The National Livestock Identification Scheme (NLIS) is a national system for livestock identification and traceability. NLIS uses machine-readable radio frequency identification devices (RFID) to identify cattle and thus enable rapid and accurate traceability for
food safety, product integrity and market access purposes.

Access to the information managed by the NLIS could be used within BioSIRT in two distinct ways. One is to identify individual animals on a particular area of interest (AOI) and the other is to assist with tracing the movement of animals and thus identifying
further AOIs (from the NLIS database).

A major issue for BioSIRT to interface to the NLIS database is the need to access the NLIS information within each instance of BioSIRT. This means that every jurisdiction will need to be able to connect to the NLIS database. Currently this is achieved through
the installation and maintenance of an NLIS Mirror within the jurisdiction. Not all jurisdictions have implemented an NLIS mirror nor intend to.

As BioSIRT is jointly owned by all States/Territories and the Commonwealth there is a need for all owners to agree on a suitable approach to gaining access to the NLIS database before any decision is made to add the necessary functionality.

The BioSIRT Governance Group will be considering options to progress the BioSIRT / NLIS interface at its September 2009 meeting.

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Special Projects - Fruit Fly

Outputs from the BioSIRT Fruit Fly project for 2008-9 were presented to the the PHC biannual face]to]face meeting in Brisbane on 18 June 2009.

The presentation included jurisdictional reports, covering the differences and commonality between fruit fly activities  across the jurisdictions. The highlight was the presentation of BioSIRT national Fruit Fly template.

The project includes piloting the use of the template by Tasmania and NAQS (Torres Strait). Feedback from both pilots has been positive with Tasmania already progressing to statewide implementation from July this year.

Discussion covered the continuation of the BioSIRT Fruit Fly project into 2009-10.

Activities to be considered include wider implementation of the routine fruit fly template and expansion of activities covered by the template to include tree stripping and baiting.

The next activity is development of an emergency response template and enhancements to the BioSIRT application to include specific feedback from
use of the fruit fly template.