A New Information System for the Management of Non-Epidemic Veterinary Emergencies.

The Italian National Veterinary Services, public health professionals, and policy makers are asked to participate at different levels in the decision-making process for the management of non-epidemic emergencies. A decision support system offering the different administrative and operational emergency management levels with a spatial and decisional tool to be used in the case of natural disasters is still missing at the national level. Within this context, the Italian General Directorate for Animal Health of the Ministry of Health funded a research project for the implementation of a new Veterinary Information System for Non-Epidemic Emergencies (SIVENE), an innovative real-time decision support tool for emergency response in a disaster management scenario. SIVENE was developed according to a multi-layer architecture with four integrated components: the database layer, which was implemented by an RDBMS Oracle 11 g; the ReST service layer, which was created using J2EE, Spring, and MyBatis technologies; the web application (business framework and user interface), which was developed in Angular4 framework using TypeScript language; and the web Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which was realized through the implementation of a geodatabase in Oracle RDBMS 11 g. This system allows us to build up and dynamically create a set of dedicated checklists to be used in the field when gathering the information needed for the management of non-epidemic emergencies; employ the application on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones; and use the web GIS to manage and visualize data of veterinary interest and territorial maps of risk and damage.

Development of a questionnaire to evaluate the occupational stress in dog's shelter operators.

The Italian National Law on "companion animals and stray dog population control" prohibits euthanasia of shelter dogs if they are not dangerous or seriously suffering. Free roaming dogs are captured and housed in long-term shelters (LTS) until rehomed, adopted or dead.In this scenario the sheltered dogs' welfare has become a community scientific interest but few information are available about the human sphere in dogs' shelters. Aim of this study is to evaluate the social relationship between dogs and shelter operators (employees and volunteers) and the impact of their job on their quality of life in Italian shelters.A questionnaire addressed to shelter operators was developed by multidisciplinary group of experts and it is structured in three main parts: general information, operators' skills and operators' welfare and emotional sphere. This questionnaire has been included into the Shelter Quality Protocol that was used to assess the welfare of dogs housed in LTS, and it is meant to be distributed in 64 Italian shelters. A descriptive analysis was carried out. These results show that, in general, Italian shelter operators have a positive perception of their job although this have a stressful impact on their lives.

Veterinary Public Health Activities and Management of the Livestock Sector during Earthquakes and Snowstorms in the Abruzzo Region-Italy, January 2017.

In 2017 the Abruzzo region, located in central Italy, was struck by a sequence of four moderately powerful seismic events (5.0 magnitude on Richter scale), in addition to heavy snowfall that caused a state of emergency affecting the resident population and farm animals. A total of 282 stables were reported to have collapsed or been damaged and several animals (224 cows, 4025 ewes, 40,725 chickens, 22 horses and 3092 pigs) were killed. The Istituto Zooprofilattico of Abruzzo and Molise "G. Caporale" (IZSAM)-National Reference Center for Veterinary Urban Hygiene and Non-Epidemic Emergencies (IUVENE), played a crucial role in planning, coordinating and controlling veterinary activities during these catastrophic events. Operational and information tools were used to manage the needs of the communities involved, as well as to prioritize the veterinary interventions, record information, provide real-time data access, and produce reporting maps and Geographic Information System (GIS) layers. These events have highlighted how the integration of veterinary services into disaster management efforts can play an important role in protecting the health and welfare of animals, whilst also restoring economic activity and community life.