The Problem:
Changing climate and increasing globalisation of human movement and trade has dramatically increased the exposure of countries to new pests and diseases that can have devastating economic, environmental, and social impacts. Consequently, governments and industry must become smarter and more efficient in how they estimate and manage these risks. To meet this ever-increasing challenge, significant investment has focused on the development of standardised biosecurity databases (e.g. AusPestCheck) and new surveillance technologies. However, a critical gap remains – the need for a standardised, easy-to-use risk analytics platform that harnesses existing data, estimates risk, and ultimately, informs policy and operational decisions focused on managing biosecurity risk. Currently, cutting-edge risk analytics are developed by academics, for academics. Consequently, these tools are largely inaccessible to the people who need them most – surveillance practitioners, policymakers, and decision-makers. This lack of access has resulted in national inconsistencies in how risk is estimated and managed, with different jurisdictions and industries utilising different models and datasets for informing operational decisions such as where to allocate finite surveillance resources.

The Solution:
To address this critical gap, the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA) in collaboration with EcoCommons, Griffith University, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Queensland government, and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) introduce Biosecurity Commons (www.biosecuritycommons.org.au) – an open-access, cloud-based platform for modelling and analysing biosecurity risk and response, developed specifically for the Australian biosecurity sector.