Technical Aspects of Biosecurity: Screening Guidance, Attribution, and Traceability

Biosecurity is a multi-disciplinary topic that covers areas of policy, public health, economics, and science. This chapter focuses on the technical scientific aspects of the current international biosecurity framework. We discuss these technical areas in terms time horizon. We begin this chapter with review of current technology within the international biosecurity framework and discuss weakness and opportunities for further work. We then focus on near-term technical developments and imminent opportunities to strengthen the existing framework. Specifically, we break down the range of issues into biological threat prevention, detection, and response. We discuss how technical tools can assist in policy development and the engineering cycle of Design, Built, and Test. Finally, this chapter describes a ‘futuring’ exercise conducted by the working group that created this chapter to explore broader longer-term issues in the biosecurity space.