Biosecurity managers and scientists need to model and run wind-borne pest or pathogen dispersal scenarios to assess the risks associated with infestation or disease. Intersect has redeveloped a tool TAPPAS (Tool for Assessing Pest and Pathogen Aerial Spread) to assist with biosecurity risk assessment that protects Australia’s agriculture from pests and pathogens. Threat scenarios modelled and visualised through TAPPAS afford a greater capacity to assess how to prepare for and respond to a wind-borne biosecurity issue or emergency.
TAPPAS enables system users (State & Federal Governments and industry partners) to investigate potential new biosecurity threats posed by wind dispersal to guide surveillance, preparedness, incursion response, and resource prioritisation. The redeveloped system builds on the the first version of TAPPAS, a prototype system developed by CSIRO. The prototype (and the new system) have three key areas of function: the dispersion modelling, the ability to view previously run dispersion models, and visualisation of those modelled runs.