Optimizing surveillance strategies for early detection of invasive alien species

Denys Yemshanov, Robert G. Haight, Frank H. Koch, Robert C. Venette, Tom Swystun, Ronald E. Fournier, Mireille Marcotte, Yongguang Chen and Jean J. Turgeon

Ecological Economics, 2019, vol. 162, issue C, 87-99

Abstract: Surveillance programs to detect alien invasive pests seek to find them as soon as possible, but also to minimize the cost of damage from invasion. To examine the trade-offs between these objectives, we developed an economic model that allocates survey sites to minimize either the expected mitigation costs or the expected time until first detection of an invasive alien pest subject to a budget constraint on surveillance costs. We also examined strategies preferred by ambiguity-averse decision makers that minimize the expected and worst-case outcomes of each performance measure. We applied the model to the problem of detecting Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, one of the most harmful invasive alien insects in North America. When minimizing expected mitigation costs or expected time to detection, the trade-off between these survey objectives was small. Strategies that minimize the worst-case mitigation costs differed sharply and surveyed sites with high host densities using high sampling intensities whereas strategies that minimize the worst detection times surveyed sites across the entire area using low sampling intensities. Our results suggest that preferences for minimizing mitigation costs or time to detection are more consequential for ambiguity-averse managers than they are for risk-neutral decision-makers.

Keywords: Uncertainty; Early detection survey; Time to first detection; Scenario-based model; Conditional value-at-risk; Asian longhorned beetle; Ambiguity aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918303987
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:162:y:2019:i:c:p:87-99

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.04.030

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().