Characterizing the connection between swine production sites by personnel movements using a mobile application-based...

Biosecurity is critical to productivity and profitability in swine production systems and can be achieved by incorporating external (bioexclusion) and internal (biocontainment) practices. Although increasing threats of foreign animal diseases have justified the need of rigorous external biosecurity plans, their effectiveness highly depend on the compliance of on-farm employees, farm-related personnel, and visitors. In this study, we evaluated the uses of a mobile application-based geofencing platform in two swine production systems for accurately identifying personnel movements between swine production sites and detecting potential biosecurity breaches by violating required downtime between site visits. The geofencing platform accurately recognized 95.2% (379/398) of personnel entries comparing to physical entry logs. Further, among 1861 entries over a period of one month, 19 strongly connected components and 12 potential biosecurity breaches were identified. Personnel with duty in communications and information systems committed 75% of biosecurity breaches. The results reported herein demonstrated the possible uses of geofencing platforms for investigating connections among swine production sites by personnel movements and identifying biosecurity breaches.