Economic analysis of surveillance systems/components should be required **as an aid to decision-making in surveillance to inform the allocation of scarce resources**. I\\  t shows the consequences of alternatives and helps to identify which of these is to be preferred from an economic point of view.\\  Economics is a discipline focused on the efficiency criteria for making choices between alternative uses of limited resources. It provides robust criteria to assess how decisions about the allocation of resources **impact on the well-being of different groups of people in society and for society as a whole**.\\  A unifying underlying principle of economic analyses is to provide a measure of the relative value attached to **competing alternative strategies** and thereby **facilitate decisions about the allocation of resources**.\\ \\ [[/Economic-evaluation-methods|Link to the description of the methods commonly used for the economic evaluation of surveillance.]]