Week 7: Structured Decision Making and Adaptive Management Flashcards
environmental decisions are…
Complex and multifaceted: ecological, social, economic, political
Often urgent and highly uncertain
Consequences can be irreversible
decision making in the past
Reactive rather than proactive
Based on trial and error or prevailing wisdom
Short-term rather than long-term planning
Lack transparency and clear rationale
Poor community engagement - public submission phase
Lack performance measures
what is structured decision making?
A process to help managers make better decisions
Draws on elements of:
Biology and ecology
Decision analysis
Management science
Economics
Psychology and facilitation
why do we need structured decision making?
Decisions need to be transparent
Often there are multiple objectives
Need to consider trade-offs
Uncertainty about data and costs
Stakeholders
Political sensitivities
what are the steps in structured decision making?
Clarify the decision context: what is the decision? Who will make it? What’s the timeframe? What’s the budget?
Define objectives and measures: what are we hoping to achieve? Are there multiple objectives? How will we know when we have achieved our objectives?
Develop alternatives: how could we achieve objectives? What are the options available? Are they distinct alternatives?
Estimate consequences: what do we expect to occur if we implement each alternative? How certain are we of that information? Are there trade-offs between consequences?
Evaluate trade-offs and select: which alternative gives the best outcomes across all objectives? Can we achieve an acceptable trade-off?
Implement, monitor and review: did things turn out as expected? What did we learn? Should we change the decision?
cost-benefit analysis
Evaluates the conservation outcomes achieved for the money invested
Return on investment
Can be used to rank the most efficient actions
Most effective not always equal most efficient
multi-criteria decision making
Has many parallels with SDM
Select criteria for decision
Assign weights to criteria
Score and rank options
risk assessments
Identifies hazards, their likelihood and consequences
Useful for estimating uncertain consequences
Doesn’t consider trade-offs or values
risk management
Similar to SDM - compares alternative actions
Frames everything as a risk
No guidance on how to make a decision
adaptive management
Systematic approach to learning from management outcomes
A type of SDM
Tends to focus solely on ecological outcomes
Rarely lives up to promise
steps of adaptive management
Set-up phase:
Stakeholder involvement
Objectives
Management actions
Models: identify models that characterise different ideas about how the system works
Monitoring plans: design and implement a monitoring plan
Iterative phase:
6. Decision making: select management actions
7. Follow-up monitoring
8. Assessment: improve understanding of resource dynamics by comparing predicted vs observed change in resource status
9. Iteration: cycle back to 6 and less frequently to 1
features of adaptive management
Allows us to learn from our actions and adapt decisions through time
Critical uncertainty
Iterative decisions
Targeted monitoring to learn and update
Change decision in response to learning
It is trial or error
passive adaptive management
Passive adaptive management: do action that gives best expected performance at each decision (time) point but monitor to update belief in competing hypotheses
Implement the action expected to work best given current understanding of system
No trade-offs between learning and outcomes but learning rate can be slower
active adaptive management
Active adaptive management: explicitly incorporate benefit of learning in deciding what action to take—might take a sub-optimal action if means can learn quickly
Implement the action expected to be best outcome taking potential learning into account (may include poorly performing actions in short term)
Trade-off between loss in performance and ability to resolve uncertainty
Need a model of learning process to access this trade-off
is adaptive management worth it?
Should we spend time and money resolving uncertainty
Will the information change our decisions and improve our performance?
