GMSE: An r package for generalised management strategy evaluation

Abstract

Management strategy evaluation (MSE) is a powerful tool for simulating all key aspects of natural resource management under conditions of uncertainty. We present the r package generalised management strategy evaluation (GMSE), which applies genetic algorithms to provide a generalised tool for simulating adaptive decision‐making management scenarios between stakeholders with competing objectives under complex social‐ecological interactions and uncertainty. GMSE models can be agent‐based and spatially explicit, incorporating a high degree of realism through mechanistic modelling of links and feedbacks among stakeholders and with the ecosystem; additionally, user‐defined sub‐models can also be incorporated as functions into the broader GMSE framework. We show how GMSE simulates a social‐ecological system using the example of an adaptively managed waterfowl population on an agricultural landscape; simulated waterfowl exploit agricultural land, causing conflict between conservation interests and the interest of food producers maximising their crop yield. The r package GMSE is open source under GNU Public License; source code and documents are freely available on GitHub.

Online multiplayer games as virtual laboratories for collecting data on social‐ecological decision making

“…Big data generated from online games could be applied to suggest novel solutions to real-world problems (e.g., Khatib et al 2011). Data could also be used to parameterise social-ecological models, which are currently limited in their ability to accurately model complex and goal-oriented human decision-making (Schlüter et al 2012;Duthie et al 2018). For example, videogame data might be used to build a robust Artificial Intelligence of stakeholder decision making in agent-based models to better predict biodiversity change across different local land conditions and management policies.…”

A checklist for choosing between R packages in ecology and evolution

“…Furthermore, publications describing the use of packages in ecology and evolution strongly suggest that the package will be functional and potentially appropriate to your own adventure, that is, see the R package codyn on CRAN for community dynamic measures with documentation and a peer‐reviewed publication to describe it in depth (Hallett et al, ). There are many other examples also published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution (Duthie et al, ; Harmer & Thomas, ; Remelgado, Wegmann, & Safi, ; Wubs et al, ). Another important attribute of packages is the frequency of use.…”

“…Methods in Ecology and Evolution(Duthie et al, 2018;Harmer & Thomas, 2019;Remelgado, Wegmann, & Safi, 2019;Wubs et al, 2019). Another important attribute of packages is the frequency of use.…”

Integrating conflict, lobbying, and compliance to predict the sustainability of natural resource use

“…Overview of the generalized management strategy evaluation (GMSE) approach used in this study. by the manager is implemented using a genetic algorithm that finds an adaptive, but not necessarily optimal, policy, thereby mimicking a goal-oriented process prone to human error (see Duthie et al 2018 for more details). The resulting quota is then transferred to the harvest submodel, which also calls a genetic algorithm to determine a harvest that minimizes deviation from a user-specific target abundance (N U ) whilst taking into account varying levels of user budget (Appendix 1, Fig.…”

“…Model simulations were carried out in R (version 3.4.3) using the package GMSE (version 0.4.0.11; Duthie et al 2018). The R code used to produce simulations is provided in Appendix 2, and the definition and values for set and derived parameters are presented in Appendix 3, Table A3.1.…”