Stefano Canessa and colleagues have recently published a much needed paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution to help managers answer: when do we need more data?
Stefano provides an excel spreadsheet and also wrote a blog in MEE! Well done Stefano.
Canessa, S., Guillera-Arroita, G., Lahoz-Monfort, J. J., Southwell, D. M., Armstrong, D. P., Chadès, I., Lacy, R. C., Converse, S. J. (2015), When do we need more data? A primer on calculating the value of information for applied ecologists. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12423
I have found that thinking through what uncertainty really matters a rewarding process. For example, my last talk at ICCB 2015 also showed that critical uncertainty is often limited to a small number of unknown in Conservation. Go ahead fellow scientists, embrace uncertainty. If you were an economist you would say that uncertainty and associated decisions bring opportunities and perhaps flexibility!
On a side note, I’ve been recently thinking about a dynamic version of the Expected Value of Perfect Information – For example you can check out this paper.