System-of-Systems hierarchy of biodiversity conservation problems

Many natural and man-made systems influence the well-being and sustainability of a country. The state of biodiversity, water, air, and land are examples of the former whereas health, education, economy, and policies are examples of the latter. These systems are extremely involved and hard to model. To overcome some of the difficulties a System-of-Systems (SoS) approach is adopted. This paper models biodiversity as a SoS at various levels of organization, and each level is in turn modeled according to existing knowledge pertaining to that level. The goal is to devise strategies that improve and ultimately maximize biodiversity for a given region or country. These strategies entail certain constraints such as limited budgets. Such problems should be formulated as optimal control or adaptive control problems, wherein the strategies span all possible uncertainties to bring biodiversity within target regions. Various adaptive policies could then be designed to account for missing intermediate targets so as to improve sustainable biodiversity in a country.

► A System-of-Systems hierarchy of biodiversity conservation problems is presented. ► Area-temperature models are used to estimate future species extinction in ecosystems. ► The economic impact of biodiversity loss is highlighted. ► Budget-constrained conservation strategies are designed as optimal control problems.