Decision and Control In Uncertain Resource Systems

This book evolved from a number of graduate courses in resource management and operations research. The courses had the common theme that the problems of interest are dynamic with unknown and/or stochastic components. The last course, Mathematics of Renewable Resources, was designed as a research-level literature survey course. A draft of the manuscript for this book was used in this course. The draft was given to the students in advance of the lectures and was then revised after classroom experience and comments. The theme of this book is resource exploitation under uncertainty. Exploration as well as exploitation is considered throughout. In general, the exploration side of resource management has not received the consideration that it deserves. The best way to learn about the nature of resource stocks is to go out and search for them, to find out what you don't know by what you do.