Examining the CDCynergy Event Assessment Tool: an investigation of the anthrax crisis in Boca Raton, Florida

This paper examines the dependability of the Event Assessment Tool over time. The latter is part of a CD-ROM--Emergency Risk Communication CDCynergy--distributed primarily to public information officers in the United States by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Event Assessment Tool is designed to aid emergency professionals in identifying the magnitude of a crisis event and to suggest appropriate actions to confront such a situation. Applied twice during the 2001 anthrax bioterrorism crisis in Boca Raton, Florida, the tool functioned in a binary manner by first indicating a moderate crisis level (on 4 October) and then four days later (on 8 October) a highly intense crisis, suggesting that it is time sensitive. This anthrax event provides an opportunity for crisis and disaster managers to understand the dynamic nature of crises. Rapid changes during these types of events suggest that any metric used to predict intensity must account for this variability. Additional limitations and implications of the tool are discussed.     

Assessing the Cost of an Invasive Forest Pathogen: A Case Study with Oak Wilt

Economic assessment of damage caused by invasive alien species provides useful information to consider when determining whether management programs should be established, modified, or discontinued. We estimate the baseline economic damage from an invasive alien pathogen, Ceratocystis fagacearum, a fungus that causes oak wilt, which is a significant disease of oaks (Quercus spp.) in the central United States. We focus on Anoka County, Minnesota, a 1,156 km² mostly urban county in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan region. We develop a landscape-level model of oak wilt spread that accounts for underground and overland pathogen transmission. We predict the economic damage of tree mortality from oak wilt spread in the absence of management during the period 2007–2016. Our metric of economic damage is removal cost, which is one component of the total economic loss from tree mortality. We estimate that Anoka County has 5.92 million oak trees and 885 active oak wilt pockets covering 5.47 km² in 2007. The likelihood that landowners remove infected oaks varies by land use and ranges from 86% on developed land to 57% on forest land. Over the next decade, depending on the rates of oak wilt pocket establishment and expansion, 76–266 thousand trees will be infected with discounted removal cost of $18–60 million. Although our predictions of removal costs are substantial, they are lower bounds on the total economic loss from tree mortality because we do not estimate economic losses from reduced services and increased hazards. Our predictions suggest that there are significant economic benefits, in terms of damage reduction, from preventing new pocket establishment or slowing the radial growth of existing pockets.