A fuzzy risk assessment model used for assessing the introduction of African swine fever into Australia from overseas

African swine fever (ASF) is a contagious and lethal hemorrhagic disease with a high case fatality rate. Since 2007, ASF has been spreading into many countries, especially in Europe and Asia. Given that there is no effective vaccine and treatment to deal with ASF, prevention is an important way for a country to avoid the effects of the virus. Australia is currently ASF-free but the disease has been reported in many neighboring countries, such as Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea. Therefore, it is necessary for Australia to maintain hyper-vigilance to prevent the ASF introduction. In this paper, we propose the use of fuzzy concepts to establish a fuzzy risk assessment model to predict the ASF introduction risk in Australia. From the analysis, the international passengers (IP) and international import trade (IIT) are concluded as the two main ASF introduction factors based on transmission features and past research. From the established fuzzy risk assessment model based on the analysis of the 2019 and 2020 data, the risks of ASF introduction into Australia are considered to be low. The model further deduced that the Asian region was the major source of potential risks. Finally, in order to validate the effectiveness of the established fuzzy risk assessment model, the qualitative data from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom was used. From the validation results, it has shown that the results were consistent when the same data is adopted, and thus proved that the functionality of the established fuzzy risk assessment model for assessing the risk in Australia.