My PhD project aims to develop and implement an age-structured, spatially explicit model to predict the long-term development of fish stocks. The model tries to combine the merits both of individual based models and classical population dynamics models, which treat entire fish stocks as their basic entity. Thus, on the one hand, the model’s description is based on the observable behavior of individuals and the interactions of ecosystem components are an emergent feature of the model. On the other hand, it is formulated in terms of partial differential equations and can hence benefit from the well-developed mathematical framework for analyzing such equations and for approximating their solutions numerically. Special attention will be paid to the implementation of the model, which is supposed to be facilitated by model-driven software development techniques.
It is envisioned to employ the model on the one hand for assessing different management scenarios that aim at rebuilding fish stocks. On the other hand, it could serve to estimate the influence of environmental parameters on the development of fish stocks only by describing the influence of those parameters on individuals.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Arne Johanson
Ph.D. Student, Dept. of Computer Science
Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel
Email:  arj@informatik.uni-kiel.de
Phone: +49 431 880 7551 (office)