Concurrently, mathematical models have played an ever greater role in interpreting and responding to emerging pathogens. These models have typically been either of the ''simple but tractable'' variety which ignore or average over demographic structure and social mixing patterns [11, 12] or the ''complex computer simulation'' variety that capture many details of demographic structure and dynamics, but of whom the behaviour can only be determined by intensive numerical analysis [13, 14, 15] . The aim of this study is to develop methods of a perhaps ''slightly less simple but still tractable'' variety that capture some of the detail that micro-simulations have shown is important, but which can be rapidly applied (say on a daily basis) in an emerging outbreak situation, to inform policy. More specifically, the aim is to arrive at a method to estimate the key transmission and control parameters for a model of transmission within and between households from as few detailed observations as are likely to be gathered in the heat of a major outbreak.