Expectations of wildlife health surveillance systems and implications for system design

Wildlife health surveillance is a rapidly evolving field. The goal of this commentary is to share the authors perspectives on the evolving expectations of wildlife health surveillance. We describe the basis for developing our opinions using multiple information sources including a narrative literature review, convenience samples of websites and conversations with experts. With increasing prominence of wildlife health, expectations for surveillance have increased. Situational awareness and threat or vulnerability detection were expected outputs. Action expectation themes included knowledge mobilization, reliable action thresholds and evidence-based decision making. Information expectations were broad and included the need for information on social and ecological risk drivers and impacts and evaluation of surveillance systems. Surveillance systems developers should consider: (1) What methods can equivalently and reliably manage the biases, uncertainties and ambiguities of wildlife health information; (2) How surveillance and intelligence systems support acceptable, ethical, efficient and effective actions that do not generate unintended consequences; and (3) How to generate evidence to show that surveillance and intelligence systems lead to decisions affecting vulnerability or resilience to endemic health threats, emerging diseases, climate change and other conservation threats.