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The rise of globalisation has led to a sharp increase in international trade, with high volumes of containers, goods and items moving across the world. Unfortunately, these trade pathways also facilitate the movement of unwanted pests, weeds, diseases, and pathogens. Each item could contain biosecurity risk material, but it is impractical to inspect every item. Instead, inspection efforts typically focus on high risk items. However, low risk does not imply no risk. It is crucial to monitor the low risk pathways to ensure that they are and remain low risk. To do so, many approaches would seek to estimate the risk to some precision, but the lower the risk, the more samples needed to estimate the risk. On a low-risk pathway that can be afforded more limited inspection resources, it makes more sense to assign fewer samples to the lower risk activities. We approach the problem by introducing two thresholds. Our method focuses on letting us know whether the risk is below certain thresholds, rather than estimating the risk precisely. This method also allows us to detect a significant change in risk. Our approach typically requires less sampling than previous methods, while still providing evidence to regulators to help them efficiently and effectively allocate inspection effort., Comment: 12 + 2 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

National governments use border information to efficiently manage the biosecurity risk presented by travel and commerce. In the Australian border biosecurity system, data about cargo consignments are collected from records of directions: that is, the records of actions taken by the biosecurity regulator. This data collection is complicated by the way directions for a given entry are recorded. An entry is a collection of import lines where each line is a single type of item or commodity. Analysis is simple when the data are recorded in line mode: the directions are recorded individually for each line. The challenge comes when data are recorded in container mode, because the same direction is recorded against each line in the entry. In other words, if at least one line in an entry has a non-compliant inspection result, then all lines in that entry are recorded as non-compliant. Therefore, container mode data creates a challenge for estimating the probability that certain items are non-compliant, because matching the records of non-compliance to the line information is impossible. We develop a statistical model to use container mode data to help inform biosecurity risk of items. We use asymptotic analysis to estimate the value of container mode data compared to line mode data, do a simulation study to verify that we can accurately estimate parameters in a large dataset, and we apply our methods to a real dataset, for which important information about the risk of non-compliance is recovered using the new model.

This work introduces a comprehensive approach to assess the sensitivity of model outputs to changes in parameter values, constrained by the combination of prior beliefs and data. This novel approach identifies stiff parameter combinations strongly affecting the quality of the model-data fit while simultaneously revealing which of these key parameter combinations are informed primarily by the data or are also substantively influenced by the priors. We focus on the very common context in complex systems where the amount and quality of data are low compared to the number of model parameters to be collectively estimated, and showcase the benefits of this technique for applications in biochemistry, ecology, and cardiac electrophysiology. We also show how stiff parameter combinations, once identified, uncover controlling mechanisms underlying the system being modeled and inform which of the model parameters need to be prioritized in future experiments for improved parameter inference from collective model-data fitting.

Scientific knowledge and advances are a cornerstone of modern society. They improve our understanding of the world we live in and help us navigate global challenges including emerging infectious diseases, climate change and the biodiversity crisis. For any scientist, whether they work primarily in fundamental knowledge generation or in the applied sciences, it is important to understand how science fits into a decision-making framework. Decision science is a field that aims to pinpoint evidence-based management strategies. It provides a framework for scientists to directly impact decisions or to understand how their work will fit into a decision process. Decision science is more than undertaking targeted and relevant scientific research or providing tools to assist policy makers; it is an approach to problem formulation, bringing together mathematical modelling, stakeholder values and logistical constraints to support decision making. In this paper we describe decision science, its use in different contexts, and highlight current gaps in methodology and application. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust mathematical models into the public spotlight, but it is one of innumerable examples in which modelling informs decision making. Other examples include models of storm systems (eg. cyclones, hurricanes) and climate change. Although the decision timescale in these examples differs enormously (from hours to decades), the underlying decision science approach is common across all problems. Bridging communication gaps between different groups is one of the greatest challenges for scientists. However, by better understanding and engaging with the decision-making processes, scientists will have greater impact and make stronger contributions to important societal problems.

Dual control denotes a class of control problems where the parameters governing the system are imperfectly known. The challenge is to find the optimal balance between probing, i.e. exciting the system to understand it more, and caution, i.e. selecting conservative controls based on current knowledge to achieve the control objective. Dynamic programming techniques can achieve this optimal trade-off. However, while dynamic programming performs well with discrete state and time, it is not well-suited to problems with continuous time-frames or continuous or unbounded state spaces. Another limitation is that multidimensional states often cause the dynamic programming approaches to be intractable. In this paper, we investigate whether continuous-time optimal control tools could help circumvent these caveats whilst still achieving the probing-caution balance. We introduce a stylized problem where the state is governed by one of two differential equations. It is initially unknown which differential equation governs the system, so we must simultaneously determine the true differential equation and control the system to the desired state. We show how this problem can be transformed to apply optimal control tools, and compare the performance of this approach to a dynamic programming approach. Our results suggest that the optimal control algorithm rivals dynamic programming on small problems, achieving the right balance between aggressive and smoothly varying controls. In contrast to dynamic programming, the optimal control approach remains tractable when several states are to be controlled simultaneously., Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures