8 Why carry out environmental surveillance?

AMR surveillance in the environment can take many forms, involving different compartments and different techniques, and is often complex and potentially a resource-intensive task – so having well-defined objectives clarifies what specific outcomes are needed. This in turn guides the design of the study. Setting clear objectives is vital to ensure that the surveillance process is focused, meaningful and effective.

The different possible overall objectives of surveillance are similar across One Health domains. Specifically, the four overall objectives for surveillance (including environmental surveillance) are to:

• determine trends of AMR
• determine emerging forms of AMR
• generate data contributing to exposure assessments of AMR
• determine the efficiency of interventions.

These overall objectives can be narrowed down to more specific sub-objectives and tailored to the environmental context. You will consider the four overall objectives, written more specifically for the environment, in the following sections.