Post provided by Dr Stefano Canessa

Applied ecology can be defined as scientific knowledge that helps in making good management decisions. Scientists have a natural desire to collect information, managers want that information so that they know they are doing the right thing, and both generally act under the assumption that more information equals better decisions. This is generally correct, since information helps us make, well, informed decisions. Therefore, when our ecological knowledge is uncertain (which is practically always the case) we usually advocate further research.

On the other hand, however, information comes at a cost. It may cost money to collect it and take time to set up studies: both are usually in short supply. We can’t learn everything and often the information we can actually collect is still imperfect. So how do we determine if that additional piece of information we’d like to have is really valuable for our management?

In ‘When do we need more data? A primer on calculating the value of information for applied ecologists’ , Stefano Canessa and colleagues provide a tutorial to the calculation of value of information (VOI) for applied ecologists and managers who would like to know more about it, but are not familiar with decision-theoretic principles and notation.

What is ‘Value of Information’?

In decision analysis, the value of information is the improvement in the outcomes of our actions that we would expect if we could reduce or eliminate uncertainty before making a decision. Previously applied in engineering, economics and healthcare planning, VOI is also intuitively appealing for environmental management, where decisions must be made in the face of ubiquitous uncertainty.  Knowing the value of information can assist in designing monitoring and experimental programs, implementing adaptive management and prioritising sources of uncertainty. In other words, it can help applied ecologists and conservation managers find a focused, transparent way to address the inevitable need for “more data”.

An increasing number of studies are applying VOI to conservation management; however, in spite of its potential the technique is still underused in real-world applications, particularly beyond the small community of applied ecologists trained in decision-analytic methods.

In summary, three things determine the value of information:

1. How much we already know (the more we know, the less beneficial it is to collect more information)
2. Whether and how we would react to that extra information by changing actions, and how much better would the updated action be
3. How good is the information we can actually get (think about sample sizes, imperfect detection, time lags, etc)

Continue reading “The Value of Information: Does More Data Mean Better Decisions?”