Deliberative Multi-criteria Evaluation (DMCE).

(Here is another short introduction I wrote for the same project report. I did known something about MCDA. But somehow I thought participatory/deliberative processes were part of a MCDA. But only recently did I realize MCDA refers to an analytical approach only, in other words, one can finish a MCDA study by himself sitting in a dark room alone... Perhaps in the case studies I had read/when used in environment management area, MCDA has always been combined with a deliberative process?)

The environment is a site of conflict between competing interests and values, so environmental decision-making is essentially conflict analysis characterized by ecological, economic and socio-political value judgements. Without the help of an analytical tool, the decision making tends to suffer from problems such as admittance of some critical values and miscalculation of event uncertainties (Lahdelma, Salminen et al. 2000).

Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) proposes an analytical approach to solve these problems. It can deal with mixed sets of data (both qualitative and quantitative) and take explicit account of both conflicting criteria and uncertainty (Mendoza and Martins 2006; Wittmer, Rauschmayer et al. 2006).

Deliberative Multicriteria Evaluation (DMCE) seeks to combine these advantages of MCDA in providing analysis structure with benefits of citizen/stakeholder participation (Proctor and Drechsler 2006). Compared to MCDA without a participatory component, DMCE offers an opportunity for making explicit divergences, for facilitating consensus-building and for initiating a dynamic process of social learning (Rauschmayer and Wittmer 2006).

DMCE have been widely applied in natural resource management arena as a decision-aid tool (Bojorquez-Tapia, Sanchez-Colon et al. 2005; Hajkowicz and Collins 2007), and a recent trend is to combine DMCE with Geographic Information System (GIS) (Malczewski 2006) and dynamic modelling (Antunes, Santos et al. 2006). Only very recently did researchers start to use DMCE in invasive species risk management (Cook and Proctor 2007).

References

Antunes, P., R. Santos, et al. (2006). "Participatory decision making for sustainable development - the use of mediated modelling techniques." Land Use Policy 23(1): 44-52.

Bojorquez-Tapia, L. A., S. Sanchez-Colon, et al. (2005). "Building consensus in environmental impact assessment through multicriteria modeling and sensitivity analysis." Environmental Management 36(3): 469-481.

Cook, D. and W. Proctor (2007). "Assessing the threat of exotic plant pests." Ecological Economics 63(2-3): 594-604.

Hajkowicz, S. and K. Collins (2007). "A review of multiple criteria analysis for water resource planning and management." Water Resources Management 21(9): 1553-1566.

Lahdelma, R., P. Salminen, et al. (2000). "Using multicriteria methods in environmental planning and management." Environmental Management 26(6): 595-605.

Malczewski, J. (2006). "GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis: a survey of the literature." International Journal of Geographical Information Science 20(7): 703-726.

Mendoza, G. A. and H. Martins (2006). "Multi-criteria decision analysis in natural resource management: A critical review of methods and new modelling paradigms." Forest Ecology and Management 230(1-3): 1-22.

Proctor, W. and M. Drechsler (2006). "Deliberative multicriteria evaluation." Environment and Planning C-Government and Policy 24(2): 169-190.

Rauschmayer, F. and H. Wittmer (2006). "Evaluating deliberative and analytical methods for the resolution of environmental conflicts." Land Use Policy 23(1): 108-122.

Wittmer, H., F. Rauschmayer, et al. (2006). "How to select instruments for the resolution of environmental conflicts?" Land Use Policy 23(1): 1-9.