On 5 February 2025, the seventh webinar in the GBADs & DECIDE Seminar Series took place. Titled “Data Availability, Requirements and Limitations in Global Animal Health Research and Decision-making” this webinar featured three speakers: Emma-Jane Murray – Health and Agricultural Sciences PhD Scholar, University College Dublin School of Veterinary Medicine; Camille Delavenne – Consultant (DVM, MSc), EpiMundi, Lyon, France; and Kassy Raymond – PhD Candidate in Computational Sciences, University of Guelph, Canada.
The three presentations showcased the strong synergies between GBADs and DECIDE, highlighting the complementary levels at which both initiatives operate.
The session began with Emma-Jane, who presented a use case demonstrating how animal health data from Ireland was used to determine cattle biomass. With a background in public health, veterinary epidemiology, governance, and animal science, Emma-Jane has conducted research on the burden of cattle diseases in Ireland at University College Dublin’s School of Veterinary Medicine, funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Ireland. Her work contributes to the Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme.
Next, Camille Delavenne addressed the challenges associated with reusing such data, particularly the lack of metadata. Camille, an epidemiologist and veterinarian, has been working at EpiMundi (formerly Ausvet Europe) for the past three years. In DECIDE, she collaborates with Céline Faverjon, co-leader of DECIDE WP1, to improve the management of endemic contagious diseases by promoting better practices for non-scholarly data reuse.
Finally, Kassy Raymond presented solutions for improving data reuse through the creation of metadata. A PhD candidate in Computational Sciences at the University of Guelph’s School of Computer Science, Kassy was also the Technical Manager for the GBADs Informatics theme. Her research focuses on applying data governance principles to enhance the quality, discoverability, and reusability of animal health and production data. She explores data infrastructure, interoperability, and graph databases to improve data mapping and extract meaningful insights from Open Data sources. Her research is supported by an NSERC Doctoral Graduate Scholarship (CGS-D) and GBADs funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
A heartfelt thank you to our speakers for their insightful presentations and to Gerdien van Schaik for expertly moderating the session.