securing the border from invasives robust inspections under severe uncertainty保护边境安全从生物入侵强劲的检查下严重的不确定性.pdf

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Economics Research International Volume 2010, Article ID 510127, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2010/510127 Research Article Securing the Border from Invasives: Robust Inspections under Severe Uncertainty L. Joe Moffitt,1 John K. Stranlund,1 and Craig D. Osteen2 1 Department of Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 80 Campus Center Way, Amherst, MA 01003, USA 2 United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service in Washington, DC 20036, USA Correspondence should be addressed to L. Joe Moffitt, moffitt@ Received 16 March 2010; Accepted 25 May 2010 Academic Editor: Yew-Kwang Ng Copyright © 2010 L. Joe Moffitt et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Two important features of agricultural quarantine inspections of shipping containers for invasive species at U.S. ports of entry are the general absence of economic considerations and the severe uncertainty that surrounds invasive species introductions. In this article, we propose and illustrate a method for determining an inspection monitoring protocol that addresses both issues. An inspection monitoring protocol is developed that is robust in maximizing the set of uncertain outcomes over which an economic performance criterion is achieved. The framework is applied to derive an alternative to Agricultural Quarantine Inspection (AQI) for shipments of fruits and vegetables as currently practiced at ports of entry in the United States. 1. Introduction probabilities that incorporates economic considerations with