On the set of robust sustainable thresholds for uncertain control systems

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the set of thresholds in controlled uncertain systems that ensure sustainability under all possible uncertainties, aiding decision-making in resource management.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute robust sustainable thresholds using optimal control and level-set techniques, linking viability theory with practical resource management.

Findings

The method effectively computes robust thresholds in a renewable resource example.

The approach reveals trade-offs between constraints and sustainability.

It extends viability theory to uncertain control systems.

Abstract

In natural resource management, or more generally in the study of sustainability issues, often the objective is to maintain the state of a given system within a desirable configuration, typically established in terms of standards or thresholds. For instance, in fisheries management, the procedure of designing policies may include keeping the spawning stock biomass over a critical threshold and also ensuring minimal catches. Given a controlled dynamical system in discrete-time, representing the evolution of some natural resources under the action of controls and uncertainties, and an initial endowment of the resources, the aim of this paper is to characterize the set of robust sustainable thresholds, that is, the thresholds for which there exists some control path, along with its corresponding state trajectory, satisfying for all possible uncertainty scenarios, prescribed mixed constraints parametrized by such thresholds. This set provides useful information to users and decision-makers, illustrating the trade-offs between constraints and it is strongly related to the robust viability, one of the key concepts in viability theory, discipline that study the consistency between a controlled dynamical system and given constraints. Specifically, we are concerned with characterizing the weak and strong Pareto fronts of the set of robust sustainable thresholds, providing a practical method for computing such objects based on optimal control theory and a level-set approach. A numerical example, relying on renewable resource management, is shown to demonstrate the proposed method.