Avian Flu persists in wild waterfowl populations and can be transmitted to domestic poultry, resulting in significant outbreaks. Because the virus mutates rapidly, vaccination is often ineffective, making proactive biosecurity the best line of defense.
The Avian Influenza project aims to deliver bird movement and abundance information to poultry producers via an intuitive web tool. By assessing periods of heightened risk, this tool will help producers implement targeted biosecurity measures to reduce the spread of Avian Flu, a costly and challenging transboundary disease. Using BirdFlow models—a probabilistic framework built on data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird Status and Trends—the application maps bird distributions and movement patterns, providing actionable insights for producers.
The end result will be an improved version of the BirdFlowForecast prototype.