Improving future African swine fever outbreak management through multidisciplinary partnership and learning

African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar typically presents with severe clinical disease and high case fatality rates. Disease outbreaks and the control measures have severe effects on wild boar populations, hunters and hunting management, other forests users, pig farming as well as the wider society and economy. In September 2023, ASF was confirmed in wild boar in Sweden. To date, the outbreak seems to be on the way to becoming one of few successful eradication campaigns in Europe. Some of the reasons for this accomplishment are unknown, and it is not known how the outbreak would have developed had other restrictions and control actions been implemented, or how a future outbreak in another location would develop. Given the current global ASF situation, the risk for future introductions of ASF to Swedish wild boar cannot be ignored.This project will utilise experience and data from the current outbreak to generate new knowledge To achieve this a multi-disciplinary and multi-partner approach using mixed methods will be applied, studying the societal and economic impacts of the outbreak and the control measures; wild boar population dynamics and density; prospective economic and epidemiological modelling of different ASF outbreak scenarios; how new disease introductions can be detected as early as possible; and how outbreak management in future outbreaks can be balanced weighing costs and socioeconomic impact of control measures against the effects on disease spread.The partnership will allow for both in-depth analysis, with specialists from each discipline investigating the respective research questions, and cross-disciplinary collaboration and dialogue sustainably addressing the identified challenges and fostering new ways of thinking.