Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Optimal allocation of invasive species surveillance with the maximum expected coverage concept

Formally Refereed

Abstract

We address the problem of geographically allocating scarce survey resources to detect pests in their pathways of introduction given information about their likelihood of movement between origins and destinations. We introduce a model for selecting destination sites for survey that departs from the aim of reducing propagule pressure (PP) in pest destinations and instead aims to increase monitoring of pest origins. The model is a maximum expected coverage problem (MECP), which maximizes the expected number of origins that are covered by the survey system, where an origin is covered if at least one of its transmission pathways connects to a surveyed destination. For comparison, we present two models that aim to reduce PP in destination sites. One model maximizes the expected number of transmission pathways that are covered by survey locations and the other maximizes the expected number of survey locations that have one or more pest introductions.

Keywords

emerald ash borer, human-mediated spread, invasive species, maximum expected coverage problem, optimal survey allocation, pathways, propagule pressure

Citation

Yemshanov, Denys; Haight, Robert G.; Koch, Frank H.; Lu, Bo; Venette, Robert; Lyons, D. Barry; Scarr, Taylor; Ryall, Krista; Leung, Brian. 2015. Optimal allocation of invasive species surveillance with the maximum expected coverage concept. Diversity and Distributions. 21(11): 1349-1359.
Citations
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/49742