Economics and decision making: What can big data do and not do

Decision making can be tactical (daily or weekly) or strategic (yearly). IPM can use both control of inputs or design of a system. Big data can improve both decision making and the choice of design and/or control, but likely will not be able to solve problems on its own. Practitioners and stakeholders must commit to focusing on and funding necessary economic approaches. A series of literature reviews show that economics continues to be de-emphasized by IPM practitioners in extension and research. Control tactics depend upon the product as hard technology and sampling and decision criteria as soft technology. Big data can help with sampling, but economic thresholds are not being developed or revised to connect sampling to decision making. Arthropod damage must be quantified in small experiments so that damage functions can link pest densities to crop yield and farmer income. Big data can improve our ability to calculate probabilities and frequencies for Bayesian analyses. Cooperative regional data collection can help make predictions of arthropod dispersal across regional landscapes. Ultimately, we need to discover if Big Data will help farmers make decisions about multiple pests on a single crop or a single pest in a landscape of host plants.