You are here:
Structured decision making as a method for linking quantitative decision support to community fundamental objectives
Citation:
Fulford, R., S. Yee, J. Carriger, AND M. Russell. Structured decision making as a method for linking quantitative decision support to community fundamental objectives. USEPA Community Involvement Training Conference, Atlanta, GA, August 04 - 06, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
Poster presentation at the Community involvement conference to inform regional staff about ORD activities in community engagement.
Description:
Decision support intended to improve ecosystem sustainability requires that we link stakeholder priorities directly to quantitative tools and measures of desired outcomes. Actions taken at the community level can have large impacts on production and delivery of ecosystem services back to humans in coastal ecosystems and a significant challenge is to effectively engage stakeholders and communicate these impacts in a useful manner. For this we must merge ecosystem science and decision science into a cohesive framework. Here we take a formal approach by applying Structured Decision Making (SDM) as an engagement tool for coastal communities and apply the outcome as both as decision alternatives in a system dynamics model and as a measure of success for community objectives. The SDM approach involves stakeholder engagement to identify fundamental objectives, means objectives and a means-ends network. All three are derived from review of strategic planning documents and stakeholder responses to structured discussions and questions. Fundamental objectives represent the base desires of the community and can be used to structure measures of sustainability and human wellbeing. Means objectives are intermediary actions that lead to fundamental objectives so can be used to delineate decision alternatives. The Means-ends network is a conceptual model linking actions to ecosystem service outcomes and represents a framework for parameterizing quantitative models intended to project these outcomes. In this way, decision support is separated into three elements: Decision identification, quantitative tool development and use, and measures of success, all of which involve a stakeholder engagement element. This tight integration of stakeholder engagement and quantitative tools allows for a higher level of stakeholder understanding and acceptance of the results and so provides a much higher potential for success in guiding community decisions towards sustainable outcomes. This approach is being applied in multiple coastal communities and so also provides a framework for community comparison based on all three elements (Decision-Tool-Measure) of the integrated SDM-ecosystem model framework.