Quantifying wildlife diversity using persistent homology

Gera, Parth

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117591 Copy

Description

Title

Quantifying wildlife diversity using persistent homology

Author(s)

Gera, Parth

Issue Date

2022-12-08

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Sowers, Richard B

Department of Study

Industrial&Enterprise Sys Eng

Discipline

Industrial Engineering

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• biodiversity
• persistent homology
• quantifying
• mathematical tool

Abstract

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on planet earth across all levels such as genes to ecosystems. We are at a risk of severe habitat loss and extinction in hotspots of biodiversity. This is due to excess human consumption added with the climate change forces. This underlines the need of a mathematical tool to quantify biodiversity in order to analyse the changes in an environment and act accordingly. We present a novel method of a framework based on 0-d persistent homology to quantify biodiversity of a city. This tool computes entropy of a region based on the diversity of wildlife found. The area of the region is computed using the Monte Carlo Method. We quantify diversity through entropy density and extent this tool to fifteen cities in the United States. The barcodes for these are created for a sample of the data and compared to generate actionable insights.

Graduation Semester

2022-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117591

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Parth Gera

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