出版社：International Association for Computer Information Systems
摘要：Information for decision making may be publicly available, but costly to obtain. As an experiment in environmentalscanning, the internet was searched on a daily basis over several years to collect information and provide analysisrelated to decisions on deer management. The process discovered that, contrary to common assumptions, the U.S.deer population has apparently been falling since about the year 2000 based on analysis of available state data thathad not been aggregated. In some cases, state population estimates were created using standard procedures onavailable data. Results indicate that differences in survey methods appear to be relatively constant over time asdoes the ratio of hunting data to official state population estimates. While reliability intervals for populationestimates are wide, population trend reliability is relatively high. An analysis of Connecticut and Californiaillustrate problems with the population estimates. In Connecticut, an independent group that financed some localsurveys assert the state has overestimated the population. In California, some population estimates reported to thepublic are inconsistent with historic information, masking the dramatic decline of the deer population in the state.
关键词：Environmental Scanning; Data Analysis; Deer Management; Knowledge Base
