The Impact of Emerging Infectious Diseases on Military Operations
Abstract
For the past 20 years, emerging infectious disease (EID) has been a growing concern of the national and international public health community. EIDs have the potential to decrease the effectiveness of military forces, both as a consequence of naturally occurring outbreaks within operating areas and when exploited by adversaries. The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) assessed the operational impact of EIDs on a military population in three scenarios: a naturally occurring disease outbreak; improvised use of EIDs as crude weapons or exploitation of an outbreak for operational gain; and the development and use of EIDs as biological weapons. These scenarios are represented very simply in the analysis presented here as 1, 10, and 100 initial infections. IDA developed a Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, and Removed (SEIR) Contagious Disease Model to predict the number of casualties resulting from four contagious diseases considered as surrogates for future EIDs of concern: smallpox, plague, the 1918 variant of influenza, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The model uses a time-varying disease transmission rate based on data derived from historical outbreaks of these four diseases. It also incorporates a notional representation of military unit structure and personnel movement, in which the population at risk (PAR) is divided into semi-independent units. IDA used this model to evaluate two measures of operational impact: the time at which total casualties within the PAR exceeded 20 percent - postulated here to be the point at which the PAR as a whole would become combat ineffective - and the time at which a disease outbreak reached a specified unit. The time to combat ineffectiveness is an important determinant of the risk that EIDs pose to accomplishing operational objectives.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 27, 2016
- Accession Number
- AD1123399
Entities
People
- Jeffrey H. Grotte
- Julia K. Burr
- Kate M. Sixt
- Lucas A. Laviolet
- Monica Smith
- Robert L. Cuneta
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses