Conclusion
Our study presents a first ever attempt to assess the risks of the spread of Peste des petits ruminants in the Republic of Kazakhstan based on some of the most general socio-economic and landscape indicators. The analysis that was performed by transferring a regression model trained on PPR outbreaks in China demonstrated a greater vulnerability of the Kazakhstan districts along the north-western, north-eastern, and southern borders to the spread of PPR in the event of its introduction, which corresponds to logical expectations based on the greater density of small ruminant and of socio-economic links. This study also introduced the newly created nationwide database of small ruminant population distributions, which may also be used in veterinary risk assessment studies.