Estimating eradication probabilities and trade-offs for decision analysis in invasive species eradication programs

Abstract

Eradication of invasive species can have substantial benefits but programs often fail and have high costs. Costs can be reduced by substituting lower cost management actions for higher cost actions that have a similar impact on the probability of eradication. A first step towards minimizing costs is to determine all combinations of management actions that achieve eradication with the same probability, which is a form of trade-off analysis. Trade-off analysis can have a high computational cost when large numbers of management alternatives are compared with a complex spatial simulation model. Here, we apply a practical method for conducting trade-off analysis in which statistical methods are a..