Resilience-performance trade-offs in managing social-ecological systems
March 1, 2022 - Homayounfar, Mehran; Muneepeerakul, Rachata; Anderies, John M.
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EmailJournal or Book Title: ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY
Abstract: esilience-based approaches have been attracting attention in governing social-ecological systems facing rapid social andenvironmental changes. In this article, we investigate the governance policies that focus on resilience. Our analysis is built on a stylizeddynamical model that mathematically operationalizes a widely used conceptual framework, which links social components, naturalresources, and infrastructure in social-ecological systems. Specifically, we numerically solve the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB)equation to determine policies-in the form of investment in public infrastructure-that maximize a quantitative metric of the system'sresilience. For comparison purposes, we also derive policies that maximize the system's performance and discuss the differences betweenand implications of the two policies. The results showed that a policy that maximizes performance results in sub-optimal resilience andvice versa. Moreover, our sensitivity analysis suggests that managing resilience requires that one be more responsive to changes inexternal forcing.
Type of Publication: Article
