Any prioritization system must first establish the overall objective for the program. This requires defining the values that are important. In the context of imperiled species conservation, different people or groups may value extinction prevention more than cost savings (or vice-versa). As a result, species closest to the edge of extinction may be ranked higher than species closest to listing or delisting (or vice-versa) depending on values. Each prioritization scheme will assign weights to research projects based on the species’ ranking. Here, CCI developed a simple R Shiny app to illustrate some options for prioritizing.
As the previous Senior Conservation Data Scientist in the Center for Conservation Innovation at Defenders, Mike led geoinformatics and data science projects to inform and improve conservation.