Applying Multi-Region Input-Output Analysis to Marine Bioinvasions: A
Scientific Paper of the Future in Progress
Abstract
The Scientific Paper of the Future (SPF) concept, initiated by the
EarthCube OntoSoft Funded Project, encourages scientists to publish not
only peer-reviewed journal articles, but also all associated data,
software (data processing scripts), and computational workflows, in
order to enable full science reproducibility. While the SPF concept was
originally aimed at geoscientists, it can also be applied to
interdisciplinary projects such as between ecology, economics, and
maritime shipping. Multi-region input-output (MRIO) analysis is a method
from economics for analyzing economic interdependencies between
different regional entities. Entities can be countries, regions within a
country, or groups of countries. MRIO can also be used to analyze other
types of interdependencies, such as the environmental impact of one
region’s activities on another. For this project, we use MRIO to analyze
the global spread of marine non-indigenous species via cargo ships. Over
90% of global trade occurs by maritime shipping. Along with intended
cargo, ships provide a means for marine organisms to move to locations
beyond their natural ranges, mainly via hull fouling or in ballast
tanks. These species can have harmful ecological and economic impacts at
their destinations. By using MRIO to follow the imports and exports of
commodities between countries, we can deduce the magnitude of seaborne
trade connections based on physical volume of commodity traded, and
therefore the magnitude and geographic distribution of marine
biosecurity risk. MRIO model construction involved incorporating a
diversity of data types from ecology, economics, and shipping, and has
turned out to be a surprisingly complex endeavor. My poster will
demonstrate the principles of an SPF by providing a diagram of the
computational workflow involved in the model’s construction, including
an explanation for each dataset incorporated into the model’s input
parameters and each piece of software written to process the data and
assemble and run the model.