Management Strategy Evaluation Research Articles

Evaluation of national disaster management strategy and planning for flood management and impact reduction in Gaborone, Botswana

Floods and droughts are the most common natural disasters that have and continue to result in huge economic losses and loss of life across southern Africa. Flood disasters come about due to intersection of flood waters with areas that are unprepared to deal with flooding, mostly due to poor physical planning and layout of developments and corresponding storm drainage networks especially in urban areas. With the case of Botswana, this is further exacerbated by ineffective disaster management strategies which are limited in providing comprehensive and proactive guidelines for mitigation and adaptive measures. Further, failure of the Botswana disaster management strategy is as a consequence of it being used as an all-purpose disaster management framework that does not recognize that different types of disasters have their individual unique challenges. This study, therefore, used the disaster management cycle to evaluate Botswana's generic national disaster management strategy and planning program in Gaborone. In evaluating the strategy, planning and policy, a mixed method approach was adopted at which key informant interviews were purposefully implemented with process evaluation through document review to identify and determine whether the strategies and plans meet intended goals following Risk Management Performance Index (RMI) criteria. Botswana's generic national disaster management strategy performed low when evaluated against the RMI. This low performance is mostly attributed to low technology uptake as use of technological advancements to respond to the changing dynamics of flood disasters are not assimilated into the current strategy, planning and policies which appear outdated. This, therefore, means the national management strategy, plan, and policy has reached their design life and thus should be replaced as a matter of urgency.

Reconciling the economic and biological fishery data gathered through the European Data Collection Framework: A new R-tool.

Fishing fleets and targeted stocks are the basis for the design of multiannual management plans at European or Mediterranean levels. Management Strategy Evaluation and bioeconomic modeling need data at a specific level of resolution in terms of time, area and type of fishing activity for analyzing measures for management procedures using simulations. Within the Data Collection Framework, data are to be aggregated at different levels, e.g.: fleet segment and métier, the former linked to the predominant gear and the size of the vessel and the latter to the activity itself. Fishing costs are collected by fleet segment, effort and landings by fleet segment and métier. Bioeconomic modeling for management purposes requires data at the same resolution. The aim of this paper is to describe a methodology, implemented in SECFISH R package, to disaggregate variable cost data from the fleet segment to the métier level. The presented tool allows to determine the correlation between the variable costs of a vessel and its activities to estimate costs at the activity level (e.g. métiers). The tool is applied to selected Italian fleet segments characterized by a variety of métiers and high dynamicity.

Effects of unregulated international fishing on recovery potential of the sandbar shark within the southeastern United States

Coastal sharks are challenging to manage in the United States due to their slow life history, limited data availability, history of overexploitation, and competing stakeholder interests. Furthermore, species like the sandbar shark ( Carcharhinus plumbeus) are subjected to international exploitation unmanaged by the US. We conducted a management strategy evaluation using Stock Synthesis on the sandbar shark to test the performance of various configurations of a threshold harvest control rule. In addition to uncertainties addressed in the operating model (OM), we built multiple implementation models to address uncertainties related to future levels of a partially unmanaged source of removals, the combined Mexican and US recreational (MexRec) fleet. We found that the presence of unregulated removals had the potential to significantly influence the success of the various management procedures (MPs) tested. Notably, if MexRec catches continue to increase with total stock abundance following historical trends, the rate of MexRec removals will be too large to allow the sandbar shark to recover across OMs. We present trade-offs between performance metrics across a range of 24 MPs and three implementation models.

Evaluation of offshore oil spill response waste management strategies: A lifecycle assessment-based framework

This study presents a novel life cycle assessment-based framework for low-impact offshore oil spill response waste (OSRW) management. The framework consists of design of experiment, life cycle assessment (LCA), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), operational cost analysis, and generation of regression models for impact prediction. The framework is applied to four OSRW management strategies as different combinations of solid and liquid oily waste collection, segregation, transportation, and treatment/disposal technologies. Hypothetical scenarios based on oily waste compositions are developed, and the associated environmental impacts and operational costs are evaluated. The LCA results show that oily waste composition accounts for < 5% of the total environmental impacts. Chemical demulsification has the highest total impacts due to high marine ecotoxicity and human toxicity, followed by incineration and transportation. The cost analysis reveals that the strategy comprised of centrifugation and landfilling is most preferable while the combination of chemical demulsification and incineration is least favorable. The strategy of combined use of centrifugation and landfilling is ranked as the most suitable in the MCDA. Regression models are developed to predict environmental impacts based on important factors. The framework can help waste management practitioners select low-impact strategies for handling offshore OSRW.

Management Strategy Evaluation for the Common Spiny Lobster, Palinurus elephas (Fabricius, 1787), Stock in Tunisia

The common spiny lobster, Palinurus elephas (Fabricius, 1787), fishery in Tunisia has been overexploited. This species is currently managed by temporal closures, minimum legal sizes of landings, and the prohibition of catching berried females. This study aims to develop management procedures (MPs) based on the surplus production model to set total allowable catch (TAC) as a management action for the common spiny lobster. Ten MPs ranging from conservative to more relaxed management procedures were evaluated within a management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework. Several scenarios of the operating model were considered to account for uncertainties. Five performance measures were used to evaluate MPs to identify the management strategies that can achieve the prespecified management objective of recovering the stock size as a priority and ensuring high and stable catches. The results of the MSE showed that the conservative management strategies with the highest control points performed well in terms of management objectives with a probability of biomass exceeding the reference point of higher than 90 % but yielded in the lowest catches. On the other hand, relaxed threshold-based management strategies failed in achieving management objectives with 20 % probability of being below the limit reference point. These MSE results also highlighted the trade-off between conservation and catch performance objectives and showed that some moderate management strategies balanced these objectives efficiently.

Abiotic stress in neotropical climate influences pigment production, antioxidant capacity and expression of physiological disorders in apples

Apple cultivation, which is labour-intensive and relevant in terms of food sovereignty, is experiencing a decrease in the number of producers. The fruit, of recognised organoleptic quality, often shows physiological disorders such as sun damage, scald, lenticellosis and bitter pit. These damages are associated with abiotic stresses and are expressed in the field or postharvest, reducing the economic sustainability of the crop in the neotropical climate. The objectives of the present work were: a) to determine climate factors that are limiting for adaptation under neotropical climate conditions, b) to evaluate physiological responses using spectroradiometry and analyse their potential for predicting disorders, and c) to evaluate management strategies capable of mitigating abiotic stress damage. Our results showed a high variability of predisposing conditions and damage development, with soil water availability being the condition most related to sun damage. Of the field treatments, 50% black netting was the one that reduced damage levels the most, reducing air and fruit temperature and presenting the least restrictive xylem potential (-0.54MPa), without affecting growth parameters. The treatments under netting always showed lower expressions of sunscald. Regarding damage prediction, water potential differences between fruit faces, proline concentration (destructive indicators) and PSRI480 spectroradiometry index (non-destructive indicator) showed the best characteristics.

Integrated spatial model based evaluation methodology for optimal invasive species management: common ragweed in the Republic of Korea

Invasive species have become a global problem owing to their wide-ranging adverse effects. With intensifying climate change and artificial impacts (human-mediated disturbances), which exacerbate the adverse effects of invasive species, there is an urgent need to implement strategies for the management of these species. Various removal policies have been implemented globally to manage the common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia var. elatior (L.,) Decs) owing to its high tendency to ‘spread’. Several studies on the control method, application of spatial perspective, and optimization have been conducted to establish and evaluate management strategies using different spatial models. Although each of these methods is essential for improving control efficiency, an integrated form of study is needed to determine the practicality of various policies. In this study, we developed an integrated spatial model using the species distribution model BIOMOD2, land change model LCM, dispersal model MigClim, and optimization model prioritizr, to construct an evaluation methodology. For modelling an optimal invasive species removal policy under climate change and human-mediated disturbances (2011–2079), we created two strategies from a spatial perspective, outside-in and inside-out, with the former entailing removal from the low-density outliers to the high-density centre of the colonized area and the latter processing in the opposite direction. The optimal removal sites for each strategy were set for each removal rate. Subsequently, a novel index, ‘removal effect index’, was proposed for the evaluation, in time series. The results indicate that the removal effect of the outside-in strategy was more effective, and the newly dispersed sites were efficiently removed. Furthermore, it was verified that with the implementation of the outside-in strategy having a removal rate of 65% by the 2070s, the species would be completely eradicated. Thus, this study is expected to help improve the efficiency of policy implementation for invasive species.

Climate-mediated stock redistribution causes increased risk and challenges for fisheries management

Abstract The environmental conditions that marine populations experience are being altered because of climate change. In particular, changes in temperature and increased variability can cause shifts in spatial distribution, leading to changes in local physiological rates and recruitment success. Yet, management of fish stocks rarely accounts for variable spatial dynamics or changes in movement rates when estimating management quantities such as stock abundance or maximum sustainable yield. To address this concern, a management strategy evaluation (MSE) was developed to evaluate the robustness of the international management system for Pacific hake, an economically important migratory stock, by incorporating spatio-temporal population dynamics. Alternative hypotheses about climate-induced changes in age-specific movement rates, in combination with three different harvest control rules (HCR), were evaluated using a set of simulations that coupled single-area estimation models with alternative operating models representing spatial stock complexity. Movement rates intensified by climate change caused a median decline in catches, increased annual catch variability, and lower average spawning biomass. Impacts varied by area and HCR, underscoring the importance of spatial management. Incorporating spatial dynamics and climate change effects into management procedures for fish stocks with spatial complexity is warranted to mitigate risk and uncertainty for exploited marine populations.

In Pursuit of Ecosystem-Based Management for Narragansett Bay: An Overview of Previous Models and Roadmap for Future Research

Ecosystem models have emerged as vital tools for evaluating management strategies and are increasingly used by policymakers. We reviewed the history of modeling and identified research gaps based on policy needs for ecosystem-based management of Narragansett Bay (RI, USA)—a highly-impacted system with a history of research and monitoring dating back to the 1950s. There is a need to disentangle the impacts of nutrient reductions versus climate change on species interactions as well as understand the ecological and socio-economic tradeoffs of management actions. Within this context, we consider the following to be important for future research and creation of ecosystem models for Narragansett Bay: (i) account for multi-scale processes and patterns through two-way model coupling; (ii) incorporate human behavior as part of model predictions; and (iii) lessen the impact of model uncertainty by identifying robust management strategies that will sustain resources under a range of potential future scenarios. Ecosystem modeling that builds on prior models and is informed by knowledge gaps will be a powerful tool to operationalize ecosystem-based management in Narragansett Bay and globally, providing sustainable pathways for nature and people.

Shaping sustainable harvest boundaries for marine populations despite estimation bias

AbstractBiased estimates of population status are a pervasive conservation problem. This problem has plagued assessments of commercial exploitation of marine species and can threaten the sustainability of both populations and fisheries. We develop a computer‐intensive approach to minimize adverse effects of persistent estimation bias in assessments by optimizing operational harvest measures (harvest control rules) with closed‐loop simulation of resource‐management feedback systems: management strategy evaluation. Using saithe (Pollachius virens), a bottom water, apex predator in the North Sea, as a real‐world case study, we illustrate the approach by first diagnosing robustness of the existing harvest control rule and then optimizing it through propagation of biases (overestimated stock abundance and underestimated fishing pressure) along with select process and observation uncertainties. Analyses showed that severe biases lead to overly optimistic catch limits and then progressively magnify the amplitude of catch fluctuation, thereby posing unacceptably high overharvest risks. Consistent performance of management strategies to conserve the resource can be achieved by developing more robust control rules. These rules explicitly account for estimation bias through a computational grid search for a set of control parameters (threshold abundance that triggers management action, Btrigger, and target exploitation rate, Ftarget) that maximize yield while keeping stock abundance above a precautionary level. When the biases become too severe, optimized control parameters—for saithe, raising Btrigger and lowering Ftarget—would safeguard against a overharvest risk (&lt;3.5% probability of stock depletion) and provide short‐term stability in catch limit (&lt;20% year‐to‐year variation), thereby minimizing disruption to fishing communities. The precautionary approach to fine‐tuning adaptive risk management through management strategy evaluation offers a powerful tool to better shape sustainable harvest boundaries for exploited resource populations when estimation bias persists. By explicitly accounting for emergent sources of uncertainty, our proposed approach ensures effective conservation and sustainable exploitation of living marine resources even under profound uncertainty.

Evaluation of harvest control rules for a group of interacting commercial stocks using a multispecies MSE framework

In this study, a multispecies gadget model (GadCap) simulating the interactions among the Flemish Cap cod (Gadus morhua), redfish (Sebastes spp.), and shrimp (Pandalus borealis) has been incorporated as the operating model in a management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework (a4a-FLR) to test the performance of multiple combinations of harvest control rules (HCRs) for the three stocks when recruitment uncertainty and assessment error are accounted for. The results indicate that due to the strong trophic interactions, it is not possible to achieve the precautionary exploitation of all the stocks at the same time. Maintaining shrimp biomass above the limit reference point (Blim) would require unsustainable fishing pressure on cod and redfish to reduce predation mortality. In contrast, maintaining cod biomass above Blim would involve high predation on and high risk of collapse of the shrimp and redfish stocks. The implementation of alternative two-stage HCRs would reduce predation, resulting in higher productivity and lower probability of collapse for cod and redfish. The results of this study support the need of accounting for species interactions when designing management strategies for a group of interdependent commercial stocks.

Testing and evaluation of crowd management strategies at religious gatherings in India using agent-based modelling and simulation

Testing and evaluation of crowd management strategies at religious gatherings in India using agent-based modelling and simulation

Understanding the Etiology of Pancytopenias in the CAR T-Cell Therapy Setting: What We Know and What We Don't?

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) therapy represents an innovative and transformative therapy for patients with relapsed and/or refractory (R/R) hematological malignancies. CAR T-cell therapy was first approved in R/R diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia, today the use of CAR T-cell therapy has expanded to multiple myeloma and other lymphoma subtypes such as follicular and mantle cell lymphoma. It is also being explored in earlier lines of therapy in DLBCL. CAR T-cell therapy is associated with a unique toxicity profile and development of cytopenias post CAR T-cell therapy has been reported in all pivotal clinical trials and is now considered a related side effect. Here, we provide an in-depth evaluation of etiologies, consequences, and current management strategies for cytopenias following CAR T-cell therapy.

The rationale for heterogeneous inclusion of ecosystem trends and variability in ICES fishing opportunities advice

Incorporation of ecosystem information into fish stock assessments and management advice, a cornerstone of delivering ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM), occurs often implicitly, faces multiple challenges, and remains often unquantified in terms of scope and scale. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the inclusion of ecosystem trends and variability in ICES fishing opportunities advice in the Northeast Atlantic, by covering 87% of stocks corresponding to 99% of landings. Just under 50% of all stock assessments considered ecosystem information and the majority of management strategy evaluations did so in at least one way. Almost 73% of the data-rich stocks incorporated ecosystem trends and variability in at least one way, and almost 55% of short-term forecasts did so. Stock (individual growth rate) and fisheries (landings) characteristics largely explained the observed patterns of incorporation of ecosystem information into advice, with pelagic species and stocks with higher landings having higher instances of incorporation. Early stages of the advice process (closer to data analysis and methods development) had greater inclusion of ecosystem information, though this inclusion was generally implicit and not explicit, e.g. based on a hypothesis of environmental influence on stock dynamics. Moving towards explicit instructions and routine documentation of the inclusion of ecosystem information in fishing opportunities advice will accelerate the path to the EBFM in a consistent and transparent manner.

Crocs, Inc.: Managing Corporate Resources (Strategic Perspectives)

The role of the strategic management process in organizations is to produce the best strategic plan that an organization can adopt based on its individual qualities and market position to achieve a superior competitive position in the market. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how the strategic management process can be utilized by Crocs, Inc. (Crocs) to gain and maintain a long-run competitive position in the footwear industry. This analysis considers and applies the three stages of the strategic management process, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation, to Crocs, utilizing Crocs’ current company data and strategic position and applying strategic management process tools. Analysis results feature a recommended vision and mission statement for Crocs, the best strategies for Crocs to pursue, how Crocs can progress toward achieving such strategies (through certain policies, risk considerations, and financial projections), and how the company can successfully evaluate and adapt strategies if necessary. This analysis implies how Crocs may best utilize the strategic management process to achieve success as a company in the footwear industry.

Evaluating Strategies for Managing Anthropogenic Mortality on Marine Mammals: An R Implementation With the Package RLA

Bycatch, the undesirable and non-intentional catch of non-target species in marine fisheries, is one of the main causes of mortality of marine mammals worldwide. When quantitative conservation objectives and management goals are clearly defined, computer-based procedures can be used to explore likely population dynamics under different management scenarios and estimate the levels of anthropogenic removals, including bycatch, that marine mammal populations may withstand. Two control rules for setting removal limits are the Potential Biological Removal (PBR) established under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Removals Limit Algorithm (RLA) inspired from the Catch Limit Algorithm (CLA) developed under the Revised Management Procedure of the International Whaling Commission. The PBR and RLA control rules were tested in a Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) framework. A key feature of PBR and RLA is to ensure conservation objectives are met in the face of the multiple uncertainties or biases that plague real-world data on marine mammals. We built a package named RLA in the R software to carry out MSE of control rules to set removal limits in marine mammal conservation. The package functionalities are illustrated by two case studies carried out under the auspices of the Oslo and Paris convention (OSPAR) (the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) Marine Mammal Expert Group (OMMEG) in the context of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The first case study sought to tune the PBR control rule to the conservation objective of restoring, with a probability of 0.8, a cetacean population to 80% of carrying capacity after 100 years. The second case study sought to further develop a RLA to set removals limit on harbor porpoises in the North Sea with the same conservation objective as in the first case study. Estimation of the removals limit under the RLA control rule was carried out within the Bayesian paradigm. Outputs from the functions implemented in the package RLA allows the assessment of user-defined performance metrics, such as time to reach a given fraction of carrying capacity under a given level of removals compared to the time needed given no removals.

Testing length-based reference points in a management strategy evaluation for cuckoo ray (Leucoraja naevus) and thornback ray (Raja clavata)

Abstract Elasmobranchs grow relatively slowly and mature at a relatively high age, leading to longer generation time. Due to low fecundity of these stocks, sufficient numbers of mature individuals are important to ensure a viable recruitment level and sustainable management. Length-based indicators (LBIs), such as the mean length and the mean length of the largest 5% in the catch, can be used to characterize the length distribution of exploited stocks and aid a data-limited assessment. Reference points for these indicators are calculated using basic life history parameters. Using cuckoo ray, Leucoraja naevus, and thornback ray, Raja clavata, as example species, we apply management strategy evaluations to test the performance of LBI-based harvest control rules (HCRs) in their ability to recover overexploited stocks. We illustrate the importance of the stock–recruitment relationship for the management outcome. If immature individuals are targeted by the fishery, HCRs perform better in terms of stock recovery when coupled with reference points, which account for the maturation schedule of the stock. The sensitivity of reference points to parameter misspecification means that elasmobranchs stocks in which immature individuals are exploited by the fishery may require more precautionary reference points, with consideration of the trade-off between biomass recovery and yield.

Effects of re-specifying the Northern Prawn Fishery bioeconomic model to include banana prawns

The Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) is one of Australia’s most valuable federally managed fisheries. It has also been a focus for modelling in Australia, with over 40 years of development of bioeconomic, stock assessment and management strategy evaluation models that have been used to varying degrees to inform management. The current management model has been in operation for over 10 years and is used to set the total allowable effort (TAE) for the tiger prawn (Penaeus semisulcatus and P. esculentus) component of the fishery, historically undertaken after a mid-year closure. The success of management has resulted in increased stocks of tiger prawns, and a fishery before the mid-year closure during which fishing for banana prawns was historically the main activity. While the current management model includes the consequences of fishing for tiger prawns during the first season in terms of which weeks are available for fishing for tiger prawns when estimating the TAE, the lack of explicit inclusion of banana prawns in the bioeconomic modelling has resulted in concerns that the TAE may be biased, as effort is allocated in the model to tiger prawns that, in reality, should be applied to banana prawns. The current model was consequently extended to include an explicit banana prawn component, and a range of scenarios undertaken to explore the impact of this on the management advice. It was found that the current model overestimates the optimal level of effort to be applied to tiger prawns except during periods of very low banana prawn abundance. Banana prawns, which vary substantially inter-annually due largely to environmental drivers, were also found to be the key driver of the level of overall fishery profit, suggesting that greater attention to this component of the fishery may be necessary to achieve the objective of maximizing net economic returns from the NPF.

Redesigning harvest strategies for sustainable fishery management in the face of extreme environmental variability

AbstractShort‐lived, fast‐growing species that contribute greatly to global capture fisheries are sensitive to fluctuations in the environment. Uncertainties in exact stock–environment relationships have meant that environmental variability and extremes have been difficult to integrate directly into fisheries management. We applied a management strategy evaluation approach for one of Australia's large prawn stocks to test the robustness of harvest control rules to environmental variability. The model ensemble included coupled environmental‐population models and an alternative catchability scenario fitted to historical catch per unit effort data. We compared the efficacy of alternative management actions to conserve marine resources under a variable environment while accounting for fisher livelihoods. Model fits to catch per unit effort were reasonably good and similar across operating models (OMs). For models that were coupled to the environment, environmental parameters for El Niño years were estimated with good associated precision, and OM3 had a lower AIC score (77.61) than the base model (OM1, 80.39), whereas OM2 (AIC 82.41) had a similar AIC score, suggesting the OMs were all plausible model alternatives. Our model testing resulted in a plausible subset of management options, and stakeholders selected a permanent closure of the first fishing season based on overall performance of this option; ability to reduce the risk of fishery closure and stock collapse; robustness to uncertainties; and ease of implementation. Our simulation approach enabled the selection of an optimal yet pragmatic solution for addressing economic and conservation objectives under a variable environment with extreme events.

Evaluation of Various Stress Management Strategies among Chennai People - A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Feeling stressed is a part of everyone's life. A feeling of emotional or physical tension is known as stress. Relaxation strategies play an important role in overcoming stress.&#x0D; Objective: To evaluate the different stress patterns, their perceived stress and effects of different stress management strategies.&#x0D; Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted through a convenience sampling method. The participants were administered with a self developed questionnaire consisting of 11 questions. The responses were collected using google forms. Descriptive statistics, frequency analysis and chi square test was used to analyse the data.&#x0D; Results: The present study reported that the majority of respondents were stressed due to academic and personal reasons and among the various stress relaxation methods, respondents felt that music and yoga relieved them from stress.&#x0D; Conclusion: The study concluded an innovative finding that music and yogic exercises when adopted provided a decent stress management strategy that suits the respondents.