{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/resolving-the-measurement-uncertainty-paradox","title":"Resolving the measurement uncertainty paradox in ecological management","arxiv_id":"1812.11184","date":"2018-12-28","proceeding":null,"authors":["Milad Memarzadeh","Carl Boettiger"],"abstract":"Ecological management and decision-making typically focus on uncertainty\nabout the future, but surprisingly little is known about how to account for\nuncertainty of the present: that is, the realities of having only partial or\nimperfect measurements. Our primary paradigms for handling decisions under\nuncertainty -- the precautionary principle and optimal control -- have so far\ngiven contradictory results. This paradox is best illustrated in the example of\nfisheries management, where many ideas that guide thinking about ecological\ndecision making were first developed. We find that simplistic optimal control\napproaches have repeatedly concluded that a manager should increase catch\nquotas when faced with greater uncertainty about the fish biomass. Current best\npractices take a more precautionary approach, decreasing catch quotas by a\nfixed amount to account for uncertainty. Using comparisons to both simulated\nand historical catch data, we find that neither approach is sufficient to avoid\nstock collapses under moderate observational uncertainty. Using partially\nobserved Markov decision process (POMDP) methods, we demonstrate how this\nparadox arises from flaws in the standard theory, which contributes to\nover-exploitation of fisheries and increased probability of economic and\necological collapse. In contrast, we find POMDP-based management avoids such\nover-exploitation while also generating higher economic value. These results\nhave significant implications for how we handle uncertainty in both fisheries\nand ecological management more generally.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1812.11184v1","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.11184v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"resolving-the-measurement-uncertainty-paradox","repo_url":"https://github.com/boettiger-lab/pomdp-intro","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"decision-making","task_name":"Decision Making"},{"task_slug":"management","task_name":"Management"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}