One Health Security · Resources
An assessment framework for the trust conditions that determine whether biological-risk reporting and cooperation actually happen.
OHS-TPI assesses four conditions that determine whether biological-risk reporting and cooperation actually happen: Reporting Confidence, Procedural Fairness, Trusted-Network Strength and Information Resilience.
Each item records two separate things: the maturity of the capability and the evidence basis supporting the assessment. This makes it possible to distinguish an established capability supported by behavioural evidence from one resting primarily on assertion.
OHS-TPI can be used during baseline reviews, preparedness exercises, live incidents and after-action review. It is an experimental assessment framework, not a validated psychometric scale, and should not be reduced to a single trust score.
Suitable for
Defra, APHA, UKHSA and devolved equivalents; veterinary and public-health organisations; resilience teams; researchers; and teams designing or evaluating biological preparedness exercises.
Suggested citation
Morgan, A. (2026). OHS-TPI — Trust Preparedness Indicators (Version 1.1). One Health Security. Experimental assessment framework.
OHS-TPI is an experimental assessment framework, not a validated psychometric scale. Its indicators are structured to support judgement and comparison over time, not to produce a single trust score — and it should not be reduced to one.
The instrument records the evidence basis alongside each assessment precisely so that established, behaviourally-evidenced capability can be distinguished from assertion. It has not yet been through formal psychometric validation; it is released to be used, tested and challenged in real settings, and we are actively interested in where the method does not work.
Download
Instrument (PDF) and Assessment Workbook (Excel), including the worked example. Free to use with attribution.
Assessment instrument and workbook, including the worked example.
OHS-TPI assesses four trust-related conditions relevant to biological preparedness: Reporting Confidence, Procedural Fairness, Trusted-Network Strength and Information Resilience. The purpose is to identify vulnerabilities that could affect reporting, cooperation and the implementation of biological-risk interventions.
Each assessment item records the maturity of the relevant capability separately from the evidence supporting the judgement. Evidence can be asserted, documented or behaviourally evidenced. Keeping these dimensions separate helps prevent a confident but weakly evidenced assessment from appearing stronger than it is.
OHS-TPI is intended for organisations involved in biological preparedness, including veterinary and public-health authorities, government departments, resilience teams, researchers and teams designing or evaluating preparedness exercises.
It can be used for baseline preparedness reviews, exercises, live incidents and after-action assessment. Repeated assessments can also help identify whether trust-related preparedness conditions are improving, stable or deteriorating.
No. OHS-TPI is an experimental preparedness assessment tool, not a validated psychometric scale. It should be tested against behavioural and operational evidence and revised if its indicators do not help identify or explain preparedness vulnerabilities.
No. The four domains should remain visible separately. OHS-TPI deliberately avoids a single composite trust score because different combinations of strengths and weaknesses can have very different operational implications.
Yes. OHS-TPI is freely available from One Health Security with attribution. The resource includes the assessment material and an Excel workbook.
Applying this work
One Health Security provides advisory support for organisations applying its research and assessment methods to biological preparedness and biosecurity governance.
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