Ex Ante Knowledge for Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Introducing the Organizational Network Governance Approach

In our paper we investigate to what extent ex ante knowledge about a response network can be made available in order to deal with a crisis such as an infectious disease outbreak. Outbreaks are almost by definition characterized by a lack of information and knowledge. We introduce the organizational network governance approach for producing information prior to an actual outbreak, which is useful in limiting a virus’s transmission and impact. By introducing two fictitious but realistic outbreak scenarios—the outbreak of the West Nile Virus (WNV) and the outbreak of a New Asian Coronavirus (NAC) in the Netherlands—we demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. We formulate recommendations how to use the generated information to strengthen the organizational context in order to limit a virus’s transmission and impact and how to further develop the organizational network governance approach. We also formulate recommendations for how to further develop the organizational network governance approach.