Multicriteria Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making (Strategies for Sustainable Development Series)

Description

Multicriteria analysis, or MCA, has been increasingly used in environmental decision-making to support the identification of suitable courses of action by integrating factual information with value-based information collected through stakeholder engagement. Multicriteria Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making provides an introduction to the key concepts of MCA and includes a series of case studies that illustrate the application of MCA to a variety of environmental decision-making problems ranging from protected area zoning to landfill siting, and from forest restoration to environmental impact assessment of tourism infrastructures. A compact reference that can be used by researchers, practitioners and planners/decision makers, Multicriteria Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making can also serve as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a broad range of curricula. Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements List of Author and Contributors Introduction 1. Principles of Multicriteria Analysis 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Establishing the Decision Context and Structuring the Problem 1.3 Running the MCA 1.3.1 Criteria assessment 1.3.2 Criteria weighting 1.3.3 Criteria aggregation 1.3.4 Sensitivity analysis 1.4 Conclusions 2. A Review of MCA Applications for Nature Conservation 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Findings of the Review 2.2.1 Decision context and structuring 2.2.2 Analysis 2.2.3 Decision 2.3 Discussion and Recommendations for Best Practices 2.3.1 Decision context and structuring 2.3.2 Analysis 2.3.2 Decision 2.4 Conclusions 3. Landfill Site Selection: Combining Spatial MCA with Stakeholder Analysis 3.1 Context 3.1.1 Environmental decision-making problem 3.1.2 Case study description 3.2 Methods 3.2.1 Stakeholder analysis to identify decision criteria 3.2.2 SMCA to design possible landfill sites 3.2.3 MCA to rank landfill sites 3.3 Results 3.4 Lesson Learned and Conclusions 4. Protected Area Zoning: Integrating Spatial MCA and Multi-objective Evaluation 4.1 Context 4.1.1 Environmental decision-making problem 4.1.2 Case study description 4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Spatial MCA to assess land suitability 4.2.2 Multi-objective land allocation to assign protection levels 4.3 Results 4.4 Lesson Learned and Conclusions 5 Forest Landscape Restoration: Applying MCA to Design and Compare Options 5.1 Context 5.1.1 Environmental decision-making problem 5.1.2 Case study description 5.2 Methods 5.2.1 Generation of suitability maps 5.2.2 Design of reforestation options 5.2.3 Comparison of reforestation options 5.3 Results 5.4 Lesson Learned and Conclusions 6. Impact Assessment of Ski Areas: Combining GIS Indicators with MCA 6.1 Context 6.1.1 Environmental decision-making problem 6.1.2 Case study description 6.2 Methods 6.2.1 Impact assessment of ski areas 6.2.2 MCA to compare ski areas 6.3 Results 6.4 Lesson Learned and Conclusions Conclusions Annex References Index