Glossary

Aetiology

Causation of disease

Alias , Alias Type

The type of AOI alias used to identify the AOI, eg PIC, Pig tattoo, Registration #, with each having a unique number for any AOI

Area of Interest (AOI)

An AOI can be defined as a geographic area (point, line or one or more polygons) of interest to biosecurity surveillance or emergency response activity. This geographic area may represent a property, or broader or lesser areas than a property, on land or water e.g. a farm,

a paddock, an orchard or a marine park.

Case or Case Number

Normally only used in an emergency incident; as soon as a physical visit is scheduled for an AOI it becomes a Case and receives a Case number, with the first Infected Property (IP) as Case 1

Control Centre

An emergency operations centre responsible for disease control field operations in a defined area in an emergency event; while the routine use moniker would be Cost Centre

Diagnosis

A determination of the nature of a disease, pest plant identification or injury through evaluation and review; while diagnostic services return findings which need to be interpreted in context to achieve a diagnosis or identification

Diagnostic Services

Laboratory services available to agency and private practitioners; Diagnostic Services accept samples and return findings (test results which provide confirmation of pest, disease and plant identification)

Disease

Is used in the broadest context and means any disease, insect pests, pest seeds, parasites, chemically contaminated product, and any other such thing

Emergency

An actual or imminent occurrence (such as flood, storm, earthquake, explosion, accident, epidemic, epizootic or warlike action) which endangers, or threatens to endanger, the safety or health of persons or animals or destroys or damages, or threatens to destroy or damage, property, requiring a significant and co-ordinated response

Enterprise

The ‘productive things of interest’ that may be affected in an incident – cattle, crops, hives, packing/bulk handling facilities, conservation area, and so on, are termed an Enterprise

Enterprise Group

A specific component within an enterprise – a herd, a crop, a pondage etc

Enterprise Unit

Enterprise Unit is appropriate where each thing in an enterprise can be identified individually, eg individual cattle in a herd separately identified by NLIS; or units of production such as a truck, a consignment, a bale, a bin or the smallest unit of production which can be identified for tracing purposes

Event

An Event is the mechanism to describe a collection of tasks that together form a total activity; recorded in predefined fields in selected forms, each determined by an Administrator, who creates different Events to be used in each Program and Incident / Project

Form

Within the BioSIRT there are several Forms that are used to complete standard records: Trace, AOI, Diary, Visit, Observation, Survey, Consumables, Samples, Diagnosis, Status and Instrument

Incident

Incident is used in emergencies and embraces the overarching collection of activities, not smaller aspects within it, eg in a disease outbreak involving 100 AOI and 600 people, then incident would be describing all of this not just a small aspect happening on one AOI

Infestation

A pest plant or pest animal occurrence

Inspection / Auditing /

These are similar activities; the main

Monitoring

difference between them is the reasons for undertaking them

Morphology

The form of living organisms and the relationships between their structures

Owner / Occupier

Each Property has an Owner who has legal title to land, while an Occupier has rights over the land or stock on the land on the basis of lease, rent or agreement, and there may be more than one

Parcel

The smallest legally defined area of land sourced from a state’s spatial cadastral database, parcels can be any thing locatable in a cadastre, and include marine leases for example as well as land parcels; equivalent terms are ‘valuation’ and ‘title’

Party

A person or legal entity, such as a company, who has some type of relationship to land or stock on that land and who may be the contact person or person responsible during activities carried out on that land, eg owner, occupier, manager, son of the owner, leasee

Pest

Any vascular or cryptogamic plant, fungus, bacterium, Mycoplasma, virus, viroid or any invertebrate animal, insect, mite, mollusc, nematode or any other organism that may directly or indirectly injure or cause an unhealthy condition in any plant or plant product

Pest Animal

Generally an introduced (feral) animal - dog, pig, rabbit, etc

Program

A prepared plan or system of related activities for dealing with incidents of Disease / Pest / Incursion. The range of programs is determined by each agency, based upon agreements and understandings. A program may cover all or part of the discovery, response and recovery cycle. Programs may be specific, such as an Ovine Johne’s Disease program, or more general, such as a Weed Control program.

Project

Project equals Incident and is used in routine use

Property

Always referred to as Area Of Interest (AOI)
A land management unit on or to which an Event takes place. A property is spatially defined as one or many parcels managed as a single unit

Record

According to the Australian Standard, a record is recorded information in any form, including data in computer systems created or received and maintained by an organisation or person in the transaction of business or the conduct of affairs and kept as evidence of such activity

Regulatory Instrument

Term coined to cover orders, permits and quarantines

Status

Statuses are pertinent to pests, weeds and other incursions as well as animal and plant disease; a status may be applied to an Area of Interest, which may have different statuses at the same time, for different diseases

Surveillance

Systematic examination and testing of things of unknown disease/pest or other status to determine the presence or absence of a disease/pest

Survey

Is a special questionnaire (form) developed in BioSIRT for use in a program/incident surveillance process, used to standardise questions and store responses in Trace or General Events Surveys have access to an unlimited range of questions and bring substantial flexibility to the BioSIRT application

Syndrome

Syndrome represents a general indicator of a disease

Topography

The determination and description of the arrangement of parts in a region of the body, or of the external anatomy of an animal

Trace / Tracing

A trace describes the movement of an item from one point to another

Tracing is the activity of discovering and evaluating the consequences of such movements, and may be forward or backward

Zone

Is a large AOI that embraces many other complete or part AOIs; it does not have to follow any other AOI boundaries and can be quite random in shape or size