Modeling Working Group

The BBP’s Modeling Working Group (MWG) is developing quantitative models and computer simulations to integrate the various components of the BBP across different spatial and temporal scales. These models range from abstract, analytical modeling to more spatially explicit, numerical simulations as the analyses increase in spatial and component complexity. Ultimately, dynamic simulations – built on a foundation of empirical concepts and data – will provide new ways of understanding how coral reef ecosystems and human communities may respond to various MPA network scenarios.

At the same time, due to the uncertainties involved with quantifying human and natural dynamics, the inherent complexity of these systems, and the likelihood that certain factors will need to be grossly simplified to create the models, accurate predictions of outcomes will not be possible. In other words, we don’t expect to be able to produce simple, single answers to complex questions. Rather, by testing the importance of different factors to various results, and by repeating the simulations thousands of times, we will develop better probabilistic understandings of what drives the behaviors of the linked human and natural system. In this way, we will provide tools and weighted results that should help decision makers better understand the system and the range of possible outcomes given different scenarios.

In conjunction with the BBP’s GIS working group, we are also developing spatially explicit GIS-based models which will ultimately have an interface that supports and facilitates scenario testing by researchers, educators, and decision makers of various network designs and implementations.