Decision Support Systems and Environment: Role of MCDA

Abstract

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are computer-based tools designed to support management decisions (Eom, 2001). Many environmental applications of DSS are reported in the current literature, including petroleum contamination detection (Geng et al., 2001), lake remediation (Gallego et al., 2004), soil decontamination (Zhiying et al., 2003), and many others. However, many of these DSS are in fact different models integrated to better visualize data or describe systems; they are not tailored to address specific decision problems or help decision makers in making inevitable trade-offs. Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), on the other hand, offers the ability to integrate policy preferences with the judgements of technical experts (Figueira et al., 2005; Linkov et al., 2007). MCDA methods enable simultaneous consideration of stakeholder interests and technical evaluations, utilizing rigorous scientific methods to process technical information. MCDA is especially important in situations of significant uncertainty and data scarcity, such as management and restoration of contaminated sites. This Chapter focuses on the conceptual background of MCDA, with particular attention paid to environmental DSS, and it discusses some of the most commonly used approaches, especially for multi-attribute decision problems (i.e. where both criteria and alternatives are finite in number).