How decision makers can use quantitative approaches to guide outbreak responses

Decision makers are responsible for directing staffing, logistics, selecting public health interventions, communicating to professionals and the public, planning future response needs, and establishing strategic and tactical priorities along with their funding requirements. Decision makers need to rapidly synthesize data from different experts across multiple disciplines, bridge data gaps and translate epidemiological analysis into an operational set of decisions for disease control. Analytic approaches can be defined for specific response phases: investigation, scale-up and control. These approaches include: improved applications of quantitative methods to generate insightful epidemiological descriptions of outbreaks; robust investigations of causal agents and risk factors; tools to assess response needs; identifying and monitoring optimal interventions or combinations of interventions; and forecasting for response planning. Data science and quantitative approaches can improve decision-making in outbreak response. To realize these benefits, we need to develop a structured approach that will improve the quality and timeliness of data collected during outbreaks, establish analytic teams within the response structure and define a research agenda for data analytics in outbreak response. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: epidemic forecasting and control’. This theme issue is linked with the earlier issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: approaches and important themes’.