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Recent Developments in the Application of Fisher Information to Sustainable Environmental Management
Citation:
Gonzalez-Mejia, A., L. Vance, T. Eason, AND H. Cabezas. Recent Developments in the Application of Fisher Information to Sustainable Environmental Management. Chapter 2, Jiri Jaromir Klemes (ed.), Assessing and Measuring Environmental Impact and Sustainability. Elsevier BV, AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, , 25-72, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this book chapter is to summarize and expand on work done at ORD over the past seven years or so on the application of Fisher information to the mangement of complex environmental problems.
Description:
Assessing sustainability in human and natural systems is often hampered by complex dynamics, timescales, and inherent linkages among the observable properties. Although many indicators have been identified that help classify trends indicating movement toward and away from sustainability, evaluating changes in system behavior requires monitoring multiple variables over time. Therefore, there is great value in methods that can capture the dynamics of multidimensional systems. Fisher information collapses multiple variables into an index that can be monitored over time to assess changes in the dynamic behavior of systems. It has demonstrated promise in capturing dynamic order and detecting regime shifts in model and real systems, but challenges in handling data quality and interpreting results can limit its application. This chapter summarizes ongoing activities that enhance the effectiveness of the approach and extend it to develop practical mechanisms for monitoring and managing highly complex and integrated systems toward sustainability.
