Browsing by Author "Fang, Fei"

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    Cloudy with a Chance of Poaching: Adversary Behavior Modeling and Forecasting with Real- World Poaching Data
    (International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2017) Kar, Debarun; Ford, Benjamin; Gholami, Shahrzad; Fang, Fei; Plumptre, Andrew; Tambe, Milind; Driciru, Margaret; Wanyama, Fred; Rwetsiba, Aggrey; Nsubaga, Mustapha; Mabonga, Joshua
    Wildlife conservation organizations task rangers to deter and capture wildlife poachers. Since rangers are responsible for patrolling vast areas, adversary behavior modeling can help more effectively direct future patrols. In this innovative application track paper, we present an adversary behavior modeling system, INTERCEPT (INTERpretable Classification Ensemble to Protect Threatened species), and provide the most extensive evaluation in the AI literature of one of the largest poaching datasets from Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) in Uganda, comparing INTERCEPT with its competitors; we also present results from a month-long test of INTERCEPT in the field. We present three major contributions. First, we present a paradigm shift in modeling and forecasting wildlife poacher behavior. Some of the latest work in the AI literature (and in Conservation) has relied on models similar to the Quantal Response model from Behavioral Game Theory for poacher behavior prediction. In contrast, INTERCEPT presents a behavior model based on an ensemble of decision trees (i) that more effectively predicts poacher attacks and (ii) that is more effectively interpretable and verifiable. We augment this model to account for spatial correlations and construct an ensemble of the best models, significantly improving performance. Second, we conduct an extensive evaluation on the QENP dataset, comparing 41 models in prediction performance over two years. Third, we present the results of deploying INTERCEPT for a one-month field test in QENP - a first for adversary behavior modeling applications in this domain. This field test has led to finding a poached elephant and more than a dozen snares (including a roll of elephant snares) before they were deployed, potentially saving the lives of multiple animals - including elephants.
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    Evaluation of Predictive Models forWildlife Poaching Activity through Controlled Field Test in Uganda
    (AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2018) Gholami, Shahrzad; Ford, Benjamin; Kar, Debarun; Fang, Fei; Tambe, Milind; Plumptre, Andrew; Driciru, Margaret; Wanyama, Fred; Rwetsiba, Aggrey; Nsubaga, Mustapha; Mabonga, Joshua
    Worldwide, conservation agencies employ rangers to protect conservation areas from poachers. However, agencies lack the manpower to have rangers effectively patrol these vast areas frequently. While past work modeled poachers behavior so as to aid rangers in planning future patrols, those models predictions were not validated by extensive field tests.We conducted two rounds of field tests in Ugandas Queen Elizabeth Protected Area to evaluate our proposed spatio-temporal model that predicts poaching threat levels. In the first round, a one-month field test was conducted to test the predictive power of the model and in the second round an eight-month test was conducted to evaluate the selectiveness power of the model. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a predictive model is evaluated through such an extensive field test in this domain. These field tests will be extended to another park in Uganda, Murchison Fall Protected Area. Once such models are evaluated in the field, they can be used to generate efficient and feasible patrol routes for the park rangers.
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    Taking It for a Test Drive: A Hybrid Spatio-Temporal Model for Wildlife Poaching Prediction Evaluated Through a Controlled Field Test
    (Springer, Cham, 2017) Gholami, Shahrzad; Ford, Benjamin; Fang, Fei; Plumptre, Andrew; Tambe, Milind; Driciru, Margaret; Wanyama, Fred; Rwetsiba, Aggrey; Nsubaga, Mustapha; Mabonga, Joshua
    Worldwide, conservation agencies employ rangers to protect conservation areas from poachers. However, agencies lack the manpower to have rangers effectively patrol these vast areas frequently. While past work has modeled poachers’ behavior so as to aid rangers in planning future patrols, those models’ predictions were not validated by extensive field tests. In this paper, we present a hybrid spatio-temporal model that predicts poaching threat levels and results from a five-month field test of our model in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth Protected Area (QEPA). To our knowledge, this is the first time that a predictive model has been evaluated through such an extensive field test in this domain. We present two major contributions. First, our hybrid model consists of two components: (i) an ensemble model which can work with the limited data common to this domain and (ii) a spatio-temporal model to boost the ensemble’s predictions when sufficient data are available. When evaluated on real-world historical data from QEPA, our hybrid model achieves significantly better performance than previous approaches with either temporally-aware dynamic Bayesian networks or an ensemble of spatially-aware models. Second, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Uganda Wildlife Authority, we present results from a five-month controlled experiment where rangers patrolled over 450 sq km across QEPA. We demonstrate that our model successfully predicted (1) where snaring activity would occur and (2) where it would not occur; in areas where we predicted a high rate of snaring activity, rangers found more snares and snared animals than in areas of lower predicted activity. These findings demonstrate that (1) our model’s predictions are selective, (2) our model’s superior laboratory performance extends to the real world, and (3) these predictive models can aid rangers in focusing their efforts to prevent wildlife poaching and save animals.