A software tool for elicitation of expert knowledge about species richness or similar counts

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Rebecca Fisher^a ; ^{r.fisher@aims.gov.au} ; ^{rebecca_fisher76@yahoo.com.au} ; Rebecca A. O'Leary^a ; Samantha Low-Choy^b ; ^c ; Kerrie Mengersen^c ; M. Julian Caley^d
• 关键词：Elicitation software ; Estimating counts ; Species richness ; Expert elicitation ; Expert opinion ; Estimating counts
• 刊名：Environmental Modelling and Software
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：April 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：30
• 期：Complete
• 页码：1-14
• 全文大小：941 K

文摘

Elicitation of expert knowledge has proven to be useful in a variety of disciplines including ecology, conservation management and policy. Here we report the development of a protocol and software tool that aids elicitation of expert knowledge of complex systems of count data, focusing on a case study of elicitation of species richness estimates for coral reefs. The software uses newly developed elicitation procedures to elicit probability distributions of counts in a structured and ordered protocol. We present a novel tool that has considerable advantage over more classical ¡°survey?type methods for canvassing expert opinion, including the ability to produce rapid feedback based on fitted statistical distributions (thereby ensuring that expert's opinions are captured with accuracy) and a means of estimating credible bounds for estimates (essential when few experts are available). It is user friendly, based on open source software (R and tcl/tk), cross platform (Windows and Mac OSX) and the code can be easily modified to tailor the software to a range of applications.