Objective—To explore whether early analysis of spatial data may result in identification of
variables associated with epidemic spread of foot and mouth disease. Sample Population—
37 farms with infected cattle (ie, case farms) reported within the first 6 days of the 2001
Uruguayan foot-and-mouth disease epidemic. Procedure—A georeferenced database was
created and retrospective analysis was performed on case farm location in relation to farm
density, cattle density, farm type (ie, beef vs dairy cattle production), road density, case farm …

From the Mathematical Theory in Biology Institute, Department of Biological Statistics and
Computational Biology,(Rivas, Castillo-Chavez); the Institute for Resource Information
Systems (Smith), the Department of Natural Resources (Sullivan, Gardner), College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Department of Clinical Sciences (Hoogesteijn),
College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853; and Department of
Science and Technology, Universidad Metropolitana, San Juan, PR 00928-1150 (Aparicio)