Title: Modeling Sheep pox Disease from the 1994-1998 Epidemic in Evros Prefecture, Greece,
Abstract: Sheep pox is a highly transmissible disease which can cause serious loss of
livestock and can therefore have major economic impact. We present data from
sheep pox epidemics which occurred between 1994 and 1998. The data include
weekly records of infected farms as well as a number of covariates. We
implement Bayesian stochastic regression models which, in addition to various
explanatory variables like seasonal and environmental/meteorological factors,
also contain serial correlation structure based on variants of the
Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We take a predictive view in model selection by
utilizing deviance-based measures. The results indicate that seasonality and
the number of infected farms are important predictors for sheep pox incidence.