832349 Collaborative decision analysis for wildlife management

Type
Lecture and seminar
Semester hours
2
Lecturer (assistant)
Mattsson, Brady
Organisation
Offered in
Wintersemester 2023/24
Languages of instruction
Englisch
Content

Decisions with great impact are made regularly in wildlife management by government agencies, protected area managers, hunters, and landowners. These decisions are often very complex, as decision-makers have to deal with concerns of diverse stakeholders under financial and time constraints along with uncertain outcomes due to global change and other external factors. How can decision makers address this complexity while keeping their decisions feasible and transparent? Collaborative decision analysis is an approach that enables decision-making teams to tackle complex issues while basing them on the best available information.

The course covers an introduction to concepts, theories, and underlying methodologies of structured decision-making and decision analysis as applied to collaborative wildlife management contexts that include multiple stakeholders and topic experts. Principles of formal adaptive management will also be introduced. The course illustrates decision analysis as a science-policy interface method.

Qualitative methodologies covered in the course include core team formation and problem framing, stakeholder selection and interaction, objectives hierarchy, means-ends diagram, identifying external factors and management strategies, and influence diagrams. The course also introduces mixed methods, including multi-criteria decision analysis, Bayesian decision networks, knowledge elicitation with Delphi method, and translating analysis results into a format that decision-makers can interpret and use.

Illustrated examples focus on management of birds or mammals in temperate ecosystems, including coastal, freshwater wetlands, arable ecosystems, and mountain forests.
Objective (expected results of study and acquired competences)

The course includes approximately 50% lectures and 50% discussion in large and small groups.
Students identify and distinguish varying concepts, theories, and methodologies underlying collaborative decision analysis and structured decision making. They explain how these approaches can inform wildlife management and apply them to a realistic case study in a semester project.

Specifically, they frame the problem along with identifying stakeholders, constructing objectives, distinguishing external factors, developing future scenarios, and listing available management actions. They then develop alternative decision options based on contrasting future scenarios. Students predict outcomes of decision options and external factors. They then specify tradeoffs between objectives and across stakeholders to identify the best decision option using optimization. Students are thus able to interpret results from a decision analysis.
You can find more details like the schedule or information about exams on the course-page in BOKUonline.