Multiobjective Decision Support for Environmental Management

Multiple criteria decision making is a major and rapidly growing field of research. Methods resulting from this field of research are used in this book to develop a Multiobjective Decision Support Systems (MODSS) for environmental management. The primary focus of the book is therefore on the issues and practicalities that arise when these methods are applied to support decisions on environmental problems. Most methods included in this book are derived from the literature on multicriteria decision making, decision anlysis and operations research. Concepts developed in management science are used to describe environmental decision processes and to define the functions of decision support.
The author's work on MODSS has resulted in the development of a decision support package, called DEFINITE (DEcisions on a FINITE set of alternatives). A demonstration version of this programme is included with the book.
This Demo Disk can be run on a MS-DOS compatible personal computer (version 2.0 or higher) having a 3,5 inch, 720 Kb disk drive and 640 Kb available RAM.

1. Introduction to Decision Support.- 1.1. A brief overview.- 1.2. Decision problems and decision processes.- 1.3. Objectives of multiobjective decision support.- 1.4. Functions of multiobjective decision support.- 1.5. Objectives, scope and outline of the study.- 2. Environmental Decision Making.- 2.1. Introduction.- 2.2. Sustainable development as objective of environmental management.- 2.3. The nature of environmental problems.- 2.4. A set of examples of environmental problems.- 2.5. Characteristics of environmental decision processes.- 2.6. Characteristics of environmental decision problems.- 2.7. Conclusions.- 3. Methods for Multiobjective Decision Support.- 3.1. Introduction.- 3.2. Classes of multiobjective decision support.- 3.3. Discrete quantitative methods.- 3.4. Discrete qualitative or mixed methods.- 3.5. Priority information.- 3.6. Cost-Benefit Analysis and discounting.- 3.7. Graphic presentation.- 3.8. Conclusions.- 4. Sensitivity Analysis for Multiobjective Decision Support.- 4.1. Introduction.- 4.2. Sensitivity of a ranking to overall uncertainty in scores and prioritie.- 4.3. Sensitivity of a ranking to changes in a priority or a criterion score.- 4.4. Sensitivity of a ranking to changes in all priorities.- 4.5. Sensitivity of a ranking to the choice of an evaluation method.- 4.6. Siting nuclear plants in the Netherlands: an application.- 4.7. Conclusions.- 5. A Multiobjective Decision Support System for Environmental Problems.- 5.1. Introduction.- 5.2. The DEFINITE program.- 5.3. Introduction to the applications.- 6. Valuation and Uncertainty in Multiobjective Decision Support.- A system to support decisions on cleaning up polluted sites.- 6.1. Introduction.- 6.2. Structure and procedures of the system.- 6.3. Problem definition.- 6.4. Valuation of theeffects.- 6.5. Evaluation of alternatives.- 6.6. Sensitivities of rankings to uncertainties in the predicted effects.- 6.7. Conclusions.- 7. Space in Multiobjective Decision Support.- A system to support decisions on the reallocation of agricultural land.- 7.1. Introduction.- 7.2. Problem definition.- 7.3. Ranking 118 agricultural regions for combined land use and change of land use.- 7.4. Map representations.- 7.5. Optimization: the optimal land use combination.- 7.6. Conclusions.- 8. Time and Space in Multiobjective Decision Support.- A system to support decisions on electricity production.- 8.1. Introduction.- 8.2. Alternatives for electricity production.- 8.3. Emissions.- 8.4. The time pattern of emissions.- 8.5. Concentrations, depositions and effects.- 8.6. Conclusions.- 9. Conclusions.- 9.1. Introduction.- 9.2. Classification and description.- 9.3. Development and implementation.- 9.4. Three applications.- 9.5. The effectiveness of MODSS for environmental problems.- 9.6. The future of MODSS for environmental problems.- References.