Risk mapping import pathways for risk-return opportunities

The aim of this project is to develop approaches, methodologies and tools that assist the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources better understand the risk profile of its clients operating within import pathways (commodities) to determine where to allocate resources and tailor strategies to best target risk.

The Department lacks formal methods for analysing the risk and performance of clients that participate in the supply chain of imported products. As a result the Plant Division has a limited ability to tailor biosecurity risk management activities and target intervention within individual import pathways where pre-export and supply-chain measures may be in place.

The aim of this project is to develop approaches, methodologies and tools that assist the Department better understand the risk profile of its clients operating within import pathways (commodities) to determine where to allocate resources and tailor strategies to best target risk. The development of methods to quantitatively assess how steps in production and pre-export practices reduce phytosanitary risks presents significant opportunity to build the Departments risk profiling capacity, and tailor biosecurity risk management activities to target intervention within individual import pathways.

The exploration of a quantitative assessment model and a risk profiling case study will also be used to pro-actively drive development in the Department’s data holdings to underpin risk-based decision making. Development of this study will help ensure that the focus of further investment in data capture and curation is upon identifying the concrete problems that can be solved with new data or a new way of looking at data.