Abstract
The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is an application framework for designing and implementing spatially enabled knowledge-based decision support systems for environmental analysis and planning at any geographic scale(s). The system integrates state-of-the-art geographic information system, as well as knowledge-based reasoning and decision modeling, technologies to provide decision support for the adaptive management process of ecosystem management. It integrates a logic engine to perform landscape evaluations, and a decision engine for developing management priorities. The logic component: (1) reasons about large, abstract, multi-faceted ecosystem management problems; (2) performs useful evaluations with incomplete information; (3) evaluates the influence of missing information, and (4) determines priorities for missing information. The planning component determines priorities for management activities, taking into account not only ecosystem condition, but also criteria that account for logistical concerns of potential management actions. Both components include intuitive diagnostic features that facilitate communicating modeling results to a broad audience. Features of the system design that have figured in its success over the past 20 years are highlighted, together with design features planned for the next several versions needed to provide spatial decision support for adaptive management under climate change.
Highlights
The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is an application framework for constructing decision-support systems (DSS) [1] for integrated, multi-scale environmental analysis and planning
The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) belongs to the general class of multi-criteria decision models (MCDMs) [6], while Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) derives from the closely related field of multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) [7]
We turn to some practical issues of how this and the few generations of EMDS, as well as other modern systems delivering similar functionality, may be able to provide improved decision support for the rather challenging problem of adaptive management under climate change
Summary
The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is an application framework for constructing decision-support systems (DSS) [1] for integrated, multi-scale environmental analysis and planning (http://emds.mvbg.org). It supports landscape-level analyses through logic and decision engines integrated with the ArcGIS® 10.2 geographic information system (The use of trade or firm names in this publication is for reader information and does not imply endorsement by the US Department of Agriculture of any product or service) Logic modeling in this context refers to a form of knowledge-based reasoning in which expert or tacit knowledge is used to construct a representation of how to think about and solve a problem [3].
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