Conclusion
Our study presents a first ever attempt to assess the risks of the
spread of Peste des petits ruminants in the Republic of Kazakhstan based
on some of the most general socio-economic and landscape indicators. The
analysis that was performed by transferring a regression model trained
on PPR outbreaks in China demonstrated a greater vulnerability of the
Kazakhstan districts along the north-western, north-eastern, and
southern borders to the spread of PPR in the event of its introduction,
which corresponds to logical expectations based on the greater density
of small ruminant and of socio-economic links. This study also
introduced the newly created nationwide database of small ruminant
population distributions, which may also be used in veterinary risk
assessment studies.