Methods to investigate spatial and temporal clustering in veterinary epidemiology

Abstract

Due to their contagious or point-source nature, ill-health and diseases often cluster in time and/or space. Overlooking this characteristic can lead to a delay in the control or eradication of the health problem. In addition to potentially expediting control efforts, cluster identification techniques enable the researcher or health-care official to identify and adjust for Confounding factors and to generate new hypotheses regarding disease transmission. This paper examines a variety of temporal and spatial clustering techniques and focuses on those which have been reported recently in the veterinary literature. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.