Network analysis of cattle movement among premises in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, from 2013 to 2023.

Abstract

Network analysis allows for the description and comprehension of complex systems, such as cattle movements, contributing to control and surveillance of transmissible diseases by identifying points of intervention. The aim of this paper was to conduct a network analysis of cattle movements having livestock premises as nodes, in Minas Gerais State, Brazil, from January 2013 to August 2023, to identify points of interventions for improvement of disease control strategies. The analysis of the network was performed identifying the following measures: the number of nodes and edges, degree centrality, closeness, betweenness, presence of bridges, average path length, cluster coefficient, diameter, reciprocity, edges density, transitivity, magnitude of the giant strongly connected component (GSCC), weakly component (GWCC), minimum cut and community. The results showed 2014 as the year with a greater number of nodes (206,328) and more number edges (493,668), and 2020 with a smaller number of nodes (184,206) and number of edges (458,386), considering the years with data available for all months (2013 to 2022). Additionally, the mean betweenness was high in all years, with the greatest value in 2019 (361,907.4) and lowest value in 2013 (2,999,391.30) and the GSCC represented around 70 % of the nodes in all years and the GWCC varied from 89 to 93 % of the nodes in the analyzed years (2013 to 2023).Therefore, the cattle movements network in Minas Gerais State, Brazil, was described and characterized allowing for a more strategic custom-built planning for disease control by animal health authority.