ecorest (version 2.0.0)

BBfinder: Identifies "best buy" actions

Description

BBfinder this analysis examines the slope of the cost-effectiveness frontier to isolate how unit cost (cost/benefit) increases with increasing environmental benefit. Restoration actions with the lowest slope of unit cost are considered "best buys".

Usage

BBfinder(benefit, cost, CE)

Value

A list with summaries of all restoration actions as well as best buy plans only.

Arguments

benefit

a vector of restoration benefits. Typically, these are time-averaged ecological outcomes (e.g., average annual habitat units). Often project benefits are best presented as the "lift" associated with a restoration action (i.e., the benefits of an alternative minus the benefits of a "no action" plan).

cost

a vector of restoration costs. Typically, these are monetary costs associated with a given restoration action such as project first cost or annualized economic cost. Notably, these functions are agnostic to units, so costs could also be non-monetary such as lost political capital or social costs of each alternative.

CE

numeric vector of 0's and 1's indicating whether a plan is cost-effective (1) or non-cost-effective (0). Can be derived from ecorest::CEfinder.

References

Robinson R., Hansen W., and Orth K. 1995. Evaluation of environmental investments procedures manual interim: Cost effectiveness and incremental cost analyses. IWR Report 95-R-1. Institute for Water Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alexandria, Virginia

Examples

#Identify cost-effective actions based on random vectors of benefits and costs
benefit <- runif(50,min=0,max=10)
cost <- runif(50, min=0,max=1000)
CE <- CEfinder(benefit, cost)
BBfinder(benefit, cost, CE)

#Identify cost-effective actions based on a small number of user-specified benefits and costs
restben <- c(0, 10, 5, 20, 20)
restcost <- c(0, 100, 100, 200, 150)
restCE <- CEfinder(restben, restcost)
BBfinder(restben, restcost, restCE)