Adapting participatory processes to fine-tune conservation approaches in multiactor decision settings

Conservation decisions are typically made in complex, dynamic, and uncertain settings, where multiple actors raise diverse and potentially conflicting claims, champion different and sometimes contradictory values, and enjoy varying degrees of freedom and power to act and influence collective decisions. Therefore, effective conservation actions require conservation scientists and practitioners to take into account the complexity of multiactor settings. We devised a framework to help conservation biologists and practitioners in this task. Institutional economic theories, which are insufficiently cited in the conservation literature, contain useful insights for conservation. Among these theories, the economies of worth can significantly contribute to conservation because it can be used to classify the types of values peoples or groups refer to when they interact during the elaboration and implementation of conservation projects. Refining this approach, we designed a framework to help conservation professionals grasp the relevant differences among settings in which decisions related to conservation actions are to be made, so that they can adapt their approaches to the features of the settings they encounter. This framework distinguishes 6 types of agreements and disagreements that can occur between actors involved in a conservation project (harmony, stricto sensu arrangement, deliberated arrangement, unilateral and reciprocal compromise, and locked-in), depending on whether they disagree on values or on their applications and on whether they can converge toward common values by working together. We identified key questions that conservationists should answer to adapt their strategy to the disagreements they encounter and identified relevant participatory processes to complete the adaptation.     

Software for prioritizing conservation actions based on probabilistic information

Marxan is the most common decision-support tool used to inform the design of protected-area systems. The original version of Marxan does not consider risk and uncertainty associated with threatening processes affecting protected areas, including uncertainty about the location and condition of species’ populations and habitats now and in the future. We described and examined the functionality of a modified version of Marxan, Marxan with Probability. This software explicitly considers 4 types of uncertainty: probability that a feature exists in a particular place (estimated based on species distribution models or spatially explicit population models); probability that features in a site will be lost in the future due to a threatening process, such as climate change, natural catastrophes, and uncontrolled human interventions; probability that a feature will exist in the future due to natural successional processes, such as a fire or flood; and probability the feature exists but has been degraded by threatening processes, such as overfishing or pollution, and thus cannot contribute to conservation goals. We summarized the results of 5 studies that illustrate how each type of uncertainty can be used to inform protected area design. If there were uncertainty in species or habitat distribution, users could maximize the chance that these features were represented by including uncertainty using Marxan with Probability. Similarly, if threatening processes were considered, users minimized the chance that species or habitats were lost or degraded by using Marxan with Probability. Marxan with Probability opens up substantial new avenues for systematic conservation planning research and application by agencies.     

The rise of politics and the decline of vulnerability as criteria in disaster decisions of the United States, 1953–2009

This paper examines the shift from vulnerability to political responsiveness in presidential and gubernatorial disaster decisions in the United States from 1953–2009 (President Dwight D. Eisenhower to President Barack Obama) using annual request, declaration, and approval data from multiple sources. It makes three key conclusions: first, the 1988 Stafford Act expanded federal coverage to all categories of disasters, added a significant range of individual types of assistance, and provided extensive funding for recovery planning. Second, the election effects on disaster decisions increased over time whereas the impact of social and economic vulnerability (measured by scope of disaster) declined. Third, the changes affected governors more than presidents, and the choices of governors drove those of presidents. The analysis underscores the increasingly political nature of the disaster decision‐making process, as well as the difficulty in emphasising mitigation and preparedness as intensively as response and recovery. Proactive intervention yields fewer political rewards than responsiveness.     

Decision Support System for emergency scheduling of raw water supply systems with multiple sources

A hydraulic model-based emergency scheduling Decision Support System (DSS) is designed to eliminate the impact of sudden contamination incidents occurring upstream in raw water supply systems with multiple sources. The DSS consists of four functional modules, including water quality prediction, system safety assessment, emergency strategy inference and scheduling optimization. The work flow of the DSS is as follows. First, the water quality variations on specific cross-sections are calculated given the pollution information. Next, a comprehensive evaluation on the safety of the current system is conducted using the outputs in the first module. This will assist in the assessment of whether the system is in danger of failure, taking both the impact of pollution and system capacity into account. If there is a severe impact of contamination on the reliability of the system, a fuzzy logic based inference module is employed to generate reasonable strategies including technical measures. Otherwise, a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based optimization model will be used to find the least-cost scheduling plan. The proposed DSS has been applied to a coastal city in South China during a saline tide period as validation. Through scenario analysis, it is demonstrated that this DSS tool is instrumental in emergency scheduling for the water company to quickly and effectively respond to sudden contamination incidents.     

A density projection approach for non-trivial information dynamics: Adaptive management of stochastic natural resources

We demonstrate a density projection approximation method for solving resource management problems with imperfect state information. The method expands the set of partially-observed Markov decision process (POMDP) problems that can be solved with standard dynamic programming tools by addressing dimensionality problems in the decision maker's belief state. Density projection is suitable for uncertainty over both physical states (e.g. resource stock) and process structure (e.g. biophysical parameters). We apply the method to an adaptive management problem under structural uncertainty in which a fishery manager's harvest policy affects both the stock of fish and the belief state about the process governing reproduction. We solve for the optimal endogenous learning policy—the active adaptive management approach—and compare it to passive learning and non-learning strategies. We demonstrate how learning improves efficiency but typically follows a period of costly short-run investment.     

基于案例推理的地铁非常规突发事件应急决策方法研究

针对地铁非常规突发事故发生时,由于地下环境复杂且封闭,很难获取较全面、准确的事件信息等问题,非常规突发事件的地铁应急决策是一个复杂的过程。通过对地铁事件原则性机理进行分析和研究,得到地铁发生重大火灾事故情景分析的贝叶斯网络节点变量,借鉴CBR模型的思想,将基于结构和属性的双重情景检索的事故案例推理应急决策方法应用到地铁火灾非常规突发事件应急决策中,该方法排除了因属性值缺失造成相似度无法计算或计算有误的情况,可为地铁交通应急平台的后期建设提供理论支持     

节能减排指标体系与绩效评估

结合节能减排的实际情况,从资源能源消耗、污染物排放、综合利用、无害化处理以及环保治理等方面构建节能减排评价指标体系.应用熵权法确定各指标权重,引入多目标决策综合评价模型对福建省2001─2009年的节能减排成效进行评价. 结果表明,福建省节能减排成效从优到劣的排序结果依次为2007年,2008年,2006年,2005年,2009年,2004年,2001年,2002年和2003年. 基于多目标决策综合评价模型的节能减排评价方法涵义明确、计算过程简单,适于开展节能减排绩效的横向评估或纵向比较,具有一定的应用价值.      

基于决策树分类的塔里木河下游沙漠化动态变化分析

运用决策树分类法对1990年,2000年,2006年3期遥感影像进行分类,寻求生态输水对塔里木河下游沙漠化进程的影响.结果表明,2000年生态输水后沙漠化速度减缓,但沙漠化进程仍在继续.沙漠化变化方向主要为非沙漠化→轻度沙漠化→中度沙漠化→重度沙漠化→极重度沙漠化,生态输水后正向变化减小,逆向变化量增加.沙漠化变化区域主要集中在绿洲边缘和河道两侧,生态输水后变化区域离绿洲边缘和河道更近.沙漠化与距河道距离密切相关,距河道越远沙漠化退化越严重;生态输水后,距离河道1 km内的沙漠化得到抑制并出现逆转.      

Can irrational behaviour maximise fitness?

Behavioural models for both humans and other animals often assume economic rationality on the part of decision makers. Economic rationality supposes that outcomes can be assigned objective values within a stable valuation framework and that choices are made to maximise a decision maker’s expected payoff. Yet, both human and animal behaviour is often not economically rational. Here, we compare economically rational making strategies with a strategy (trade-off contrasts) that has been proposed to account for decision-making behaviour in humans that departs of axiomatic rationality. We model the fitness of these strategies in a simple environment where choices are made on repeated occasions, there is stochastic fluctuation in the choices available at any given time, and uncertainty about what choices will be available in the future. Our results show that, for at least some of the model parameter space, non-rational decision strategies achieve higher fitness than economically rational strategies. The differences were comparable in magnitude to selection differentials observed in nature.     

EFFECTS OF INCREASED DELTA EXPORTS ON SACRAMENTO VALLEY'S ECONOMY AND WATER MANAGEMENT1

ABSTRACT: Exports from the Sacramento‐San Joaquin Delta are an important source of water for Central Valley and Southern California users. The purpose of this paper is to estimate and analyze the effects increased exports to south of Delta users would have on the Sacramento Valley economy and water management if water were managed and reallocated for purely economic benefits, as if there were an ideal Sacramento Valley water market. Current Delta exports of 6,190 thousand acre‐feet per year were increased incrementally to maximum export pumping plant capacities. Initial increases in Delta exports did not increase regional water scarcity, but decreased surplus Delta flows. Further export increases raised agricultural scarcity. Urban users suffer increased scarcity only for exports exceeding 10,393 taf/yr. Expanding exports raises the economic value of expanding key facilities (such as Engle bright Lake and South Folsom Canal) and the opportunity costs of environmental requirements. The study illustrates the physical and economic capacity of the Sacramento Valley to further increase exports of water to drier parts of the state, even within significant environmental flow restrictions. More generally, the results illustrate the physical capacity for greater economic benefits and flexibility in water management within environmental constraints, given institutional capability to reoperate or reallocate water resources, as implied by water markets.