Autonomous surveillance for biosecurity

TL;DR

This paper explores autonomous surveillance systems, including sensors and robots, for biosecurity threats like diseases and pests, highlighting their potential to improve monitoring over traditional manual methods.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of autonomous surveillance technologies and maps their applications to various biosecurity threats, identifying new opportunities for enhanced monitoring.

Findings

Autonomous systems can effectively monitor vector-borne diseases.

Robotics and sensors expand biosecurity surveillance capabilities.

Opportunities exist for deploying autonomous tech in diverse environments.

Abstract

The global movement of people and goods has increased the risk of biosecurity threats and their potential to incur large economic, social, and environmental costs. Conventional manual biosecurity surveillance methods are limited by their scalability in space and time. This article focuses on autonomous surveillance systems, comprising sensor networks, robots, and intelligent algorithms, and their applicability to biosecurity threats. We discuss the spatial and temporal attributes of autonomous surveillance technologies and map them to three broad categories of biosecurity threat: (i) vector-borne diseases; (ii) plant pests; and (iii) aquatic pests. Our discussion reveals a broad range of opportunities to serve biosecurity needs through autonomous surveillance.