Extreme Event Prediction Model Inspired by Ecosystems

Innovation: Academia

Stanford

2020

Image: Sergei Akulich / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Manage Disturbance in a Community

When environmental conditions change, they can disrupt an ecosystem’s equilibrium. Excessive rain can cause flooding and drought can cause forest fires. An ecosystem must be resilient to such disturbances. Disturbances are unpredictable in location, size, and intensity, so ecosystems must be able to regrow and must have a variety of duplicate forms, processes, or systems that are dispersed in location. For example, a forest ecosystem can recover from fire because diverse organisms play different roles in different ways and in different locations. Many organisms can resprout or grow from seeds triggered by fire, and their dispersed distribution ensures that an entire population isn’t decimated. Though the recovered ecosystem may look totally different from the pre-fire one, the ecosystem as a whole remains healthy.

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Cooperate Within an Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a community of organisms (plants, animals, and microbes) interacting with one another and the nonliving components of their environment (such as air, water, and mineral soil). This interaction can be passive or active, and can cooperatively enhance the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole. For cooperation to contribute to maintaining communities within an ecosystem, it must be beneficial to at least some members of the community. Cooperation consists of symbiotic relationships, such as mutualism (in which two or more species in an ecosystem benefit) and commensalism (in which one species benefits and the effect on others is neutral). An example of a commensal relationship is that between bromeliad plants and trees: bromeliads live on trees without harming them. Bromeliads have mutualistic relationships with other species, including insects, frogs, and worms. The plants capture water in their base, forming a pond that these organisms join. The nutrients that these organisms excrete in their droppings nourish the bromeliad.

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Maintain Homeostasis

When a living system is in homeostasis, it means that internal conditions are stable and relatively constant. For example, a human’s internal temperature is approximately 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) unless there’s an illness. The human body maintains this temperature despite external ambient temperature. However, as with all physiological processes, maintaining homeostasis requires communication and coordination. So living systems have ways to detect changes from the norm, mechanisms to cause an adjustment, and negative feedback connections between the two. A desert lizard called the Gila monster offers a good example of maintaining homeostasis. The lizard goes from eating large meals to fasting for extended time periods. To maintain its blood sugar levels at a steady level, when food is scarce, its endocrine system releases a hormone that raises its blood sugar levels.

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'Black swan' event prediction model from Stanford University uses data from a variety of ecosystems to mitigate disasters.

Benefits

Increased accuracy
Increased predictability

Applications

Natural disasters
Economics

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities

The Challenge

A disease outbreak or economic crisis can cause deaths, long-term suffering, widespread devastation, and environmental damage. ‘Black swan’ events are those that are highly unlikely but if they do occur, can have an enormous impact. An accurate prediction model could alert people to prepare for the worst before such an event happens, and potentially mitigate the damage.

Innovation Details

The prediction model uses a combination of empirical dynamic modeling and prior biological knowledge. The model uses long-term data from three ecosystems: an eight-year study of plankton from the Baltic Sea with species levels measured twice weekly; net carbon measurements from a deciduous broadleaf forest at Harvard University, gathered every 30 minutes since 1991; and measurements of barnacles, algae and mussels on the coast of New Zealand, taken monthly for over 20 years. The results indicate that fluctuations in different biological species are statistically the same across different ecosystems. This suggests there are certain underlying universal processes that can be used to forecast extreme events.

Biological Model

Various ecosystems seem to predict disaster before it occurs. The abundance and resistance of an ecosystem is consistently monitored and controlled by the individuals within. When an external force is exerted, the ecosystem responds with a series of discrete events of different magnitudes.