My WebLink
|
Help
|
About
|
Sign Out
Home
Browse
Search
Ten Heuristics for Modeling Projects
CWCB
>
Water Supply Protection
>
DayForward
>
1001-2000
>
Ten Heuristics for Modeling Projects
Metadata
Thumbnails
Annotations
Entry Properties
Last modified
1/26/2010 4:37:14 PM
Creation date
6/3/2009 9:50:57 AM
Metadata
Fields
Template:
Water Supply Protection
File Number
8461.100
Description
Adaptive Management Workgroup
State
CO
Basin
South Platte
Water Division
1
Author
Craig R. Nicolson, Anthony M. Starfield, Gary P. Kofinas, John A. Kruse
Title
Ten Heuristics for Modeling Projects
Water Supply Pro - Doc Type
Publication
There are no annotations on this page.
Document management portal powered by Laserfiche WebLink 9 © 1998-2015
Laserfiche.
All rights reserved.
/
11
PDF
Print
Pages to print
Enter page numbers and/or page ranges separated by commas. For example, 1,3,5-12.
After downloading, print the document using a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader).
Show annotations
View images
View plain text
Heuristics for Interdisciplinary Modelers 379 <br />opportunity to make an initial attempt to define the <br />problem and then go on to recruit the additional <br />expertise necessary. This kind of opportunity re- <br />quires either project development funding or an <br />infrastructure that brings the small group together. <br />In the Sustainability of Arctic Communities <br />study, the High Latitude Ecosystems Directorate <br />(HLED) of the US Man and the Biosphere (MAB) <br />program provided an opportunity for a group of <br />natural and social scientists to interact with each <br />other across disciplines and to formulate a rough <br />and preliminary project definition. The HLED group <br />of six individuals started discussions 2 years before <br />the funding opportunity arose and decided to focus <br />on the combined effects of future climate change <br />and oil development on barren ground caribou <br />(Rangifer tarandus) and the indigenous communities <br />that depend on caribou as a subsistence resource. At <br />this initial stage, the stakeholder communities were <br />not directly involved. This was a mistake, even <br />though several group scientists had worked with <br />indigenous communities for many years and there- <br />fore had a good grasp of the issues involved. On the <br />basis of the preliminary problem definition, the <br />group obtained permission from the US MAB com- <br />mittee to advertise position descriptions for addi- <br />tional HI.ED members with expertise in cultural <br />ecology, modeling, and caribou biology. As new <br />people were recruited, they brought new perspec- <br />tives on the problem, and the process of negotiating <br />a common focus continued. The stakeholder com- <br />munities joined the project in the lst year and <br />provided an important reality check on our under- <br />standing of the issues (G.P. Kofinas and others un- <br />published). <br />It is extremely difficult to anticipate the appropri- <br />ate problem definition at the outset of a project. In <br />fact, during the early part of the SAC project, the <br />participating scientists felt that the target was for- <br />ever shifting. In hindsight, the team ought to have <br />built more structure into the negotiation process to <br />ensure convergence on the problem definition. To <br />promote clarity of thought and allow the group <br />members to see whether the uutial problem defini- <br />tion is correct, we recommend the following struc- <br />tured procedures: <br />1. Cooperate on the development of first proto- <br />type "straw" system simulation models, and <br />2. Submit the current understanding of the sys- <br />tem to a°peer review" by stakeholders. The <br />discipline of having to articulate the problem <br />definition to an audience beyond the team itself <br />helps to get the ideas clear. <br />Heurisric 3. Use rapid prototyping for all modeling ? <br />efforts. Not only is it hard to define the problem <br />conectly on the first attempt, it is also extremely <br />difficult at the start of a new project to discem the <br />relative importance of each of the components. <br />Therefore, rapid prototyping of models is essential. <br />Instead of trying to specify at the outset of the <br />project precisely what the final model will look like <br />and what questions it will address, the participants <br />should recognize that the first year will be devoted <br />to the development of a prototype model aimed at <br />clarifying the objectives of the study. Moreover, in <br />subsequent years, the problem and the model will <br />be further refined through successive prototypes <br />(see Schrage 2000 for a number of case studies from <br />the business world in which prototyping and suc- <br />cessive refinement consistently led to superior final <br />products). It is only when project participants see <br />actual output from the model that they can begin to <br />grasp the big picture and gain an understanding of <br />the system dynamics as a whole. This understand- <br />ing allows them to place their own contributions in <br />perspective. Furthermore, it is only when a proto- <br />type model is up and running that the relative <br />importance of the various components of the sys- <br />tem or weaknesses in the framing of the original <br />hypotheses gradually begin to emerge. <br />For example, the original proposal for the SAC <br />Project envisioned a model time horizon of 100- <br />200 years. The revised proposal (with added em- <br />phasis on the Arctic communities) defined a time <br />horizon of 40 years. One of the original hypotheses <br />was that climate change would lead to changes in <br />summer vegetation biomass and plant community <br />composition, that caribou herds would be affected <br />by these changes, and that Arctic communities, in <br />turn, would be impacted by the caribou. On the <br />basis of this definition of the problem, a set of <br />sustainability indicators was developed; these in- <br />cluded plant biomass, 'caribou herd size, hunters' <br />time-on-the-land, and seasonal caribou harvest. <br />We designed a synthesis model that would address <br />the problem as it had been defined. However, in the <br />process of developing and testing the model, we <br />discovered that there are time lags of 50-100 years <br />before any substantial simulated effects of climate <br />change are apparent at a plant community or bio- <br />mass level (Epstein and others 2000); within a 40- <br />year time horizon, climate-related vegetation <br />changes were therefore almost insignificant. We <br />also leamed from the initial modeling exercise that <br />as long as the caribou herd size is above a certain <br />threshold (estimated to be about 60% of its present <br />level), annual caribou migration patterns affect har- <br />vest success far more than a decline or increase in
The URL can be used to link to this page
Your browser does not support the video tag.