Uncertain Populations and the Value of Information (Kimberly Burnett)

A presentation at the Hawai`i Conservation Conference (by Nori Tarui, Sean D'Evelyn, Kimberly Burnett, James Roumasset University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI) on "Uncertain Populations and the Value of Information". Virtually all management models of invasive species assume that the initial species population is known with certainty, and have based management recommendations on projected growth and species capture from the assumed initial number. Because the actual population size of invasive species is almost always unknown, the policy implications of such models are limited. This paper proposes a methodology for management decisions in the presence of uncertainty about species population size. Given uncertainty, a resource manager’s efforts for invasive species control provide two benefits: (1) a direct benefit of reducing the population of invasive species, and (2) an indirect benefit of information acquisition (due to learning about the population size, which reduces uncertainty). We develop a methodology which takes into account both of these benefits, and show how optimal management decisions are altered in the presence of the indirect benefit of learning. We then apply this methodology to the case of the imminent arrival of the brown treesnake (Boiga irregularis) from Guam to the State of Hawai‘i. We find that the indirect benefit—the value of information to reduce uncertainty—is likely to be quite large.

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Google Video | December 4, 2007

Tags:. .information. .projected. .direct. .based. .always