Strad: A new role for computers in planning

Abstract

Most planners probably still think of computers as “number-crunchers” or as “numbercrunchers that can also do word-processing.” This view is not entirely off the mark because most of the software that is not for word-processing is for one kind of “number-crunching” or another. However, a software package is now available that does something quite different from what WordPerfect, Lotus l-2-3, and d-Base can do. The software is called STRAD.I It stands for “strategic adviser,” and it provides an entirely new way for planners to use computers. STRAD is designed to help planners deal with the kind of “messy,” unstructured problems that have become recognized over the last 20 or 30 years as lying at the heart of planning and management. STRAD is for environmental planners, for corporate planners, and for planners in voluntary agencies, labor unions, and developing countries STRAD is for anyone with a problem that cannot readily be measured, quantified, and calculated. As a computer program, STRAD is perhaps best described as a combination of an idea processor and a decision support system. As an idea processor, STRAD goes beyond the simple “tree” hierarchies of programs like ThinkTank or Grand View and incorporates uncertainty, probability ranges, and simple statistical techniques. As a decision support system, STRAD is not a set of mathematical models, such as you might build in a spreadsheet, but a system for recording and displaying the myriad of subjective judgments that go into planning and management decisions. This is the sense in which STRAD is a “strategic adviser.” STRAD is based on the “strategic choice” approach to planning and decision-making that was invented in England in the 1960s primarily at the Institute of Operational Research (then part of the Tavistock Institute) in their work with local authorities. The approach was first described in 1969 in a book by John Friend and Neil Jessop, “Local Government and Strategic Choice: An Operational Research Approach to the Processes of Public Planning.” A second edition was published in 1977. There have been two other major statements of the method: “Public Planning; the Inter-Corporate Dimension” (Friend, Power, & Yewlett, 1974); and