An application of Structural Risk Minimization to the selection of ecological models

Authors:	Corani Giorgio, Politecnico Milano, Italy Gatto Marino, Politecnico Milano, Italy
Topic:	8.3 Modelling & Control of Environmental Systems
Session:	Ecological Modeling and Other Environmental Issues
Keywords:	Time series analysis, Identification, Ecology, Learning Control

Abstract

The problem of distinguishing density-independent (DI) fromdensity-dependent (DD) demographic time series has been addressedin the past via hypothesis testing based on parametric bootstrapping (PBLR)and, in later works, byInformation Criteria such as FPE or SIC. Here, we address the problem in a novel wayusing Structural RiskMinimization (SRM). DI and DD time series corrupted with noise are extensively simulated using a drift (DI) anda Ricker (DD) model; on each generated time series, both models are identified, and then one is selected byFPE, SIC and SRM. The probability ofdensity-[in]dependence recognition is statisticallyassessed and compared with the results obtained via PBLR in a previous work.