Biosecurity policy and the use of geospatial predictive tools to address invasive plants: updating the risk analysis toolbox.

International and national biosecurity policies consider risk assessment a critical component of overall plant health risk analysis. The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, the International Plant Protection Convention, and the Convention on Biological Diversity all provide guidelines and recommendations on how to use risk assessment. This article discusses how these instruments address risk assessment, and makes recommendations on how the risk assessment process needs to incorporate current geospatial predictive science and geographic information systems into the plant health biosecurity risk analysis toolbox.