Course format

David Vose, an internationally renowned risk analyst specialising in food safety risk, will provide all the training. The course is focused on allowing the participants to gain the maximum useful knowledge. To that end, many worked examples are presented, together with computer modelling exercises for the participants to work through.

top

Computers

top

ModelAssist

top

Teaching philosophy

The course will be taught with a strong focus on the practical application of the techniques presented. To that end, each topic takes the following rough sequence:

• Motivation for topic (examples of applications)
• Development of theory, including implicit assumptions
• Worked example models
• Class problems
• Discussion of solutions to problems

top

Course content

Day 1

• Defining and measuring risk
• Introduction to food safety risk analysis
• How risk assessment helps manage risk
• Types of risk assessments:
• Qualitative to quantitative
• Stochastic v deterministic
• Microbial v epidemiological models
• Planning the appropriate type of risk assessment

Day 2

• Basics of probability modelling, uncertainty and inter-individual variability
• Fundamental random processes
  1. Binomial process
  2. Poisson process

Day 3

• Fundamental random processes (cont.)
  3. Hypergeometric process
  4. Sum of random variables and Central Limit Theorem
  5. More examples

Day 4

• The types of data available to risk assessment, their pros and cons
• Predictive microbial models
• Dose-response models
• Completing a microbial model
• Introduction to methods of statistical analysis relevant to microbial load
  • Classical statistics
  • The Bootstrap
  • Bayesian inference
  • The pros and cons of each approach

Day 5

• Model calibration
• Simulation model outputs
  • Standard graphical and statistical results
  • Cost-benefit analysis - defining the benefit measure

top