Eliciting Expert Knowledge in Conservation Science

Abstract

Expert knowledge is used widely in the science and practice of conservation because of the complexity of problems, relative lack of data, and the imminent nature of many conservation decisions. Expert knowledge is substantive information on a particular topic that is not widely known by others. An expert is someone who holds this knowledge and who is often deferred to in its interpretation. We refer to predictions by experts of what may happen in a particular context as expert judgments. In general, an expert-elicitation approach consists of five steps: deciding how information will be used, determining what to elicit, designing the elicitation process, performing the elicitation, and translating the elicited information into quantitative statements that can be used in a model or directly to make decisions. This last step is known as encoding. Some of the considerations in eliciting expert knowledge include determining how to work with multiple experts and how to combine multiple judgments, minimizing bias in the elicited information, and verifying the accuracy of expert information. We highlight structured elicitation techniques that, if adopted, will improve the accuracy and information content of expert judgment and ensure uncertainty is captured accurately. We suggest four aspects of an expert elicitation exercise be examined to determine its comprehensiveness and effectiveness: study design and context, elicitation design, elicitation method, and elicitation output. Just as the reliability of empirical data depends on the rigor with which it was acquired so too does that of expert knowledge.

A global review of marine turtle entanglement in anthropogenic debris: a baseline for further action

“…Nevertheless, expert knowledge and opinions are also known to be subject to biases, including overconfidence, accessibility and motivation (see e.g. Burgman et al 2011b andMartin et al 2012). In the absence of empirical data to validate our findings, this remains as simply suggestive but nevertheless relevant information in terms of identifying a potentially important conservation issue and providing relative indications of the scale of entanglement as a threat to sea turtles.…”

“…This highlights the importance of using mixed methods to access expert opinion to gain an insight into this global threat. The growing use of expert knowledge in conservation is driven by the need to identify and characterise issues under limited resource availability, and the urgency of conservation decisions (Martin et al 2012).…”

“…Surveying experts can be a powerful tool for obtaining insights on particular topics not widely known by others (Martin et al 2012). Expert knowledge and opinions may be the result of training, research, skills and personal experience (Burgman et al 2011a).…”

Solution Scanning as a Key Policy Tool: Identifying Management Interventions to Help Maintain and Enhance Regulating Ecosystem Services

“…The synopsis approach has recently been applied to all known interventions to conserve wild bees (Dicks et al 2010) and birds (Williams et al 2013) globally. The research and review process could also involve eliciting expert judgement where published data are sparse or time is short (Martin et al 2012), or using expert judgement to evaluate a complex evidence base .…”

A multi-criteria decision approach to decommissioning of offshore oil and gas infrastructure

“…Expert opinion is increasingly being used in environmental decision-making where empirical data are either uncertain or unavailable (Kuhnert et al, 2010;Martin et al, 2012). Expert opinion has already been applied to a wide range of environmental problems, including spatial distribution modeling of declining species (Murray et al, 2009), assessment of climate change impacts (Morgan et al, 2001), and forestry management (Crome et al, 1996).…”