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Sustainable System Management with Fisher Information based Objectives
Citation:
Shastri, Y., U. Diwekar, AND H. CABEZAS. Sustainable System Management with Fisher Information based Objectives. Presented at 3rd International Workshop on Fisher Information, Tucson, AR, April 07 - 11, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Sustainable ecosystem management that integrates ecological, economic and social perspectives is a complex task where simultaneous persistence of human and natural components of the system must be ensured. Given the complexity of this task, systems theory approaches based on sound mathematical techniques, such as optimization and control, are valuable. A critical element of this approach is the mathematical quantification of qualitative system properties such as regimes, stability and instability. Also important is to know the appropriate objectives to be achieved. Fisher information, a measure based on information theory, has been proposed as a tool to characterize dynamic natural systems. It has been successfully used to illustrate regime shifts and quantify system disorder. This work extends the domain to implement Fisher information to formulate mathematical objectives for ecosystem management problems. Furthermore, optimal control theory and dynamic optimization have been used to develop time dependent management strategies that achieve those objectives. The work illustrates this approach through two case studies model. The first case study analyzes a twelve compartment food-web model that includes an ecosystem, humans, a very rudimentary industrial process, a very simple agricultural system. Maximum principle from the theory of optimal control is used to solve single and multi-variable control problems that help in identifying the effective management options. The second case study focuses on an integrated ecological-economic model with an integrated macroeconomic price setting model governing the domesticated sectors. Fisher information has been shown as a predictor of system disorder through scenario studies. Later, Fisher information based objectives and dynamic optimization has been used to develop time dependent management strategies for the unsustainable scenarios. The study and the results illustrate the concept of using systems theory for ecosystem management and highlight the role of information theory in achieving those goals.