A growth rate control problem of harmful species population and its application to algae bloom

Hidekazu Yoshioka () and Yuta Yaegashi
Additional contact information
Hidekazu Yoshioka: Shimane University
Yuta Yaegashi: Kyoto University

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2020, vol. 40, issue 1, 107-124

Abstract: Abstract A mathematical framework for controlling growth rate of harmful species population is established based on the concept of stochastic control. The main problem to be addressed in this paper is to effectively suppress the population growth through manipulating its surrounding environmental conditions. The growth control is achieved through minimization of a performance index that contains the cost of interventions and a metric based on the growth rate. Solving the problem ultimately reduces to finding a solution to the associated Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation. Its solution behavior is analyzed from a mathematical viewpoint, showing that the optimal control and the optimized growth rate are critically affected by the chosen metrics in the performance index. The present model is then applied to an urgent management problem of the harmful attached algae in a dam downstream river reach, in which the dam discharge is the control variable. The application results clarify environmental dependence of the optimal dam discharge and under what condition it serves as the environmental flow to suppress the algae bloom. Throughout this paper, we demonstrate how mathematical models can be applied to environmental decision-making.

Keywords: Population dynamics; Stochastic control; Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation; Attached algae (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10669-019-09736-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:envsyd:v:40:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10669-019-09736-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/10669

DOI: 10.1007/s10669-019-09736-0

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment Systems and Decisions from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().