From biological models to economic optimization

Abstract

This article addresses the additional challenges being faced when biological models are used as a basis for decision support in livestock herds. The challenges include dealing with uncertain information, observation costs, herd dynamics and methodological issues in relation to the computational methods applied particularly in the dynamic case. The desired key property of information included in models is that it can be used as the basis for unbiased prediction of the future performance of the animals. Often there will be a tradeoff between uncertainty and costs in the sense that the level of uncertainty can be reduced (for instance through additional tests) at some cost. Thus, the decision about which (and how many) tests to perform can be seen as an optimization problem in itself. Another way of expressing the tradeoff is to talk about the value of information which can sometimes be assessed by modeling different approaches and levels of detail in data collection. Various optimization methods of relevance to herd health management are discussed with the main emphasis on decision graphs in the static case and Markov decision processes (dynamic programming) in a dynamic context.

Modelling of technological processes in a dairy cattle herd

“…Among the models of cattle production described in literature, there are models which are a part of management strategy of entire farms, models that deduct a herd of cows and models of single animals. Literature also provides exemplary models which include issues of cattle production [5] [6]. Many authors have dealt with modelling in animal production and the models include various areas related to animal production, which include milk production, meat production, animal health [7] [8].…”

A modelling framework based on MDP to coordinate farmers' disease control decisions at a regional scale

“…More recently, adaptive approaches have been developed to construct a guideline with rules varying over time and optimizing given criteria. The scope of application encompasses herd management [ 14 , 15 ], species conservation problems [ 16 , 17 ], human health management [ 18 , 19 , 20 ], and animal health management [ 21 , 22 ]. Nevertheless, the issue of adaptive coordination has not been considered yet in animal health management.…”