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INTEGRATING MODELS WITH STAKEHOLDER PREFERENCE OF WATER QUALITY INDICATORS: A CASE STUDY OF LAKE LANIER, GEORGIA, USA
Citation:
Fath*, B D., M. B. Beck, AND O. O. Osidele. INTEGRATING MODELS WITH STAKEHOLDER PREFERENCE OF WATER QUALITY INDICATORS: A CASE STUDY OF LAKE LANIER, GEORGIA, USA. Presented at EFIEA: Integrated Management of Water Resources Workshop, Paris, France, 10/25-27/2000.
Description:
One important aspect of Integrated Environmental Assessment is combining a scientific expertise and stakeholder concerns. Here, we propose a method to integrate stakeholder preferences, in particular preferences of stakeholders with differing environmental perspectives with a set of scientific hypotheses regarding basic ecosystem biology, hydrology, and chemistry. A survey was conducted to elicit individual concerns for specific water quality indicators. These responses were used to determine the stakeholders' bias for specific water quality concerns. The data revealed that there is more variation among the respondents than among the indicators. In order to investigate these differences further, each survey respondent was classified according to Thompson's (1977) Cultural Theory into one of three environmental perspectives; Egalitarian, Hierarchic, and Individualistic. We constructed a baseline set of expected behavior for the water quality indicators and incorporated the survey by standardizing the mean concern for all indicators against the independently derived baselines. The relative ranking above or below this mean determines the degree each indicator is considered a stakeholder priority and the baseline constraints are scaled to reflect the relative preferences. From this adjusted behavior space, it is possible to determine those parameters likely to influence the model for each of the stakeholder perspectives. By seeking to recocile the science base encoded in the model with the modified baseline constraints, the concerns of the stakeholders are driven into the core of our quantitative studies. The work for this project is being conducted at Lake Lanier, GA. a multi-use reservoir northeast of metropolitan Atlanta. This area has one of the fatest growing populations in the country and currently faces many water resources and land-planning decisions.