Description:
Biosecurity: A Systems Perspective provides an overview of biosecurity as a system of related components, actors and risks.
Review Quotes:
"An edited collection that distils over a decade's worth of research from the Australian Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis, Biosecurity makes a compelling case that biosecurity must be designed, governed, and evaluated as a whole system rather than a set of isolated projects. The editors structure the material logically across the preborder, border, and postborder continuum, explicitly integrating economic efficiency, institutional capacity, and behavioral factors.
The volume is particularly useful for practitioners because the text offers valuable guidance in designing robust biosecurity systems that include mapping the system (e.g., actors, flows, leverage points), identifying bottlenecks (e.g., weak import screening, under resourced local surveillance), and prioritizing high-return interventions (e.g., pathway management) supported by sustained financing and clear accountability. A key message is that biosecurity operates amid uncertainty and rapid change, so programs need feedback loops that provide real-time evaluation of system performance. The editors warn that systems thinking can drift into abstraction unless anchored to operational tools. They offer some anchors, such as risk assessment frameworks, scenario planning, and multicriteria decision analysis that will help translate strategy into implementable designs and metrics. These are the necessary elements of scaffolding that will keep incentives aligned with prevention and rapid response rather than drifting into sporadic, project-based activities. Set against the backdrop of Australia and New Zealand's comparatively strong biosecurity legislation, governance, and coinvestment by government and industry, the book is exemplary, though readers in less-resourced settings will need to adapt its framework to their institutional realities."
Philip E. Hulme, Conservation Biology, 24 March 2026