A total of 26,220 foxes that were hunted or found dead in Thuringia, Germany, between 1990 and 2009 were examined for infection with Echinococcus multilocularis, the causative agent of human alveolar echinococcosis, and 6853 animals were found …
This thesis is concerned with the analysis of spatial and temporal structures of epidemiological data using modern Bayes techniques. Mainly autoregressive distributions as Gaussian Markov random fields or random walks are used as smoothing priors.
Such extensive models can be estimated using MCMC methods only. Some effective algorithms are introduced to get estimates in acceptable time. Especially for space time interactions such algorithms are essential.
As example spatial Bayesian models are applied for wildlife disease incidence data.
The analysis of the geographical distribution of disease on the scale of geographic areas such as administrative boundaries plays an important role in veterinary epidemiology. Prevalence estimates of wildlife population surveys are often based on …