Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Case Studies in Engineering and the Environment

by Igor Linkov, Emily Moberg, Benjamin D. Trump, Boris Yatsalo, Jeffrey M. Keisler

Overview

Decision analysis has become widely recognized as an important process for translating science into management actions. With climate change and other systemic threats as driving forces in creating environmental and engineering problems, there is a great need for understanding decision making frameworks through a case-study based approach. Management of environmental and engineering projects is often complicated and multidisciplinary in scope and nature, thus issues that arise can be difficult to solve analytically. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Case Studies in Engineering and the Environment provides detailed description of MCDA methods and tools and illustrates their applications through case studies focused on sustainability and system engineering applications.

New in the Second Edition:

• Addresses current and emerging environmental and engineering problems
• Includes seven new case studies to illustrate different management situations applicable at the international level
• Builds on real case studies from recent and relevant environmental and engineering management experience
• Describes advanced MCDA techniques and extensions used by practitioners
• Provides corresponding decision models implemented using the DECERNS software package
• Gives a more holistic approach to teaching MCDA methodology with a focus on sustainable solutions and adoption of new technologies, including nanotechnology and synthetic biology

Given the novelty and inherent applicability of this decision-making framework to the environmental and engineering fields, a greater number of teaching tools for this topic need to be made available. This book provides those teaching tools, covering the breadth of the applications of MCDA methodologies with clear explanations of the MCDA process. The case studies are implemented in the DECERNS software package, allowing readers to experiment and explore and to understand the full process by which environmental managers assess these problems.

This book is a great resource for professionals and students seeking to learn decision analysis techniques and apply similar frameworks to environmental and engineering projects

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367544386
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	05/31/2023
Series:	Environmental Assessment and Management
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	420
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr. Igor Linkov is the Risk and Decision Science Focus Area Lead with the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and Adjunct Professor with Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Linkov has managed multiple risk and resilience assessments and management projects utilizing MCDA in many application domains, including critical infrastructure, environment, transportation, energy, homeland security and defense, supply chain and cybersecurity. He has published widely on environmental policy, environmental modeling, and risk analysis, including twenty books and over 350 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in top journals. He is Elected Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Society for Risk Analysis

Emily Moberg is a theoretical ecologist with degrees in environmental engineering and biological oceanography from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has worked on systems ranging from phytoplankton to fisheries and agriculture. She specializes in using optimization methods to better understand linkages between human behavior and natural resources.

Benjamin D. Trump is a governance scholar with specific interests in emerging technologies and complex systems. His work is global and comparative, including an ORISE Fellowship for the US Army Corps of Engineers in the United States, a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship the University of Lisbon (Portugal), and a Research Internship for the Institute of Occupational Medicine (Singapore). In 2016 Dr. Trump received his PhD from the University of Michigan in Health Services Organization and Policy.

Boris I. Yatsalo is Professor and Head of Information Systems dept. at the Institute of Intelligent Cybernetic Systems of the IATE National Research Nuclear University MEPHI, Obninsk-Moscow. He has been managing several international projects on developing models and computer systems for optimization of protective measures on radioactively contaminated lands. His thesis in 2004 was devoted to creation and application of GIS-based Decision Support Systems within remediation of contaminated territories. He has published more than 90 papers in Russian and international journals, book chapters and conferences. His interests include Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and management, specifically Fuzzy MCDA and Fuzzy Intelligent Systems.

Jeffrey Keisler is Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is an expert in Decision Sciences, in which he earned a PhD at Harvard, and has 30 years experience in industry, government, consulting and academic settings. He has published nearly 70 journal articles and two books on methodological and applied topics. He served as President of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society and as President of the Specialty Group on Decision Analysis and Risk within the Society for Risk Analysis, and was awarded the Decision Analysis Society’s Publication Award for his co-edited book “Portfolio Decision Analysis” and was named a Fulbright Distinguished Chair.

Table of Contents

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Methods and Applications. MCDA Methods in Depth: Sediment Management. MCDA Application in Depth: Nanomaterials. MCDA Application Case Studies: Setting Dredging Windows for Sensitive Fish Species. Management of Harmful Algal Blooms. Restoring Oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Performance Metrics for Oil Spills Response. Nanoremediation and Synthetic Bioremediation. Evaluating Cruise Ship Roots to Venice. Mining and Sustainability in the High Arctic. Sustainable Roofing Technology. Power Supply Alternatives. Material Selection for Auto Sustainability. Value of Information and Portfolio Analysis for Nanomaterial Hazard Reclassification.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Currently, the most important trend in environmental assessment is the increasing emphasis on informing the decision-making process. With this book, Igor Linkov and Emily Moberg provide a useful introduction to the most versatile tool for linking estimates of risks or impacts with the many other considerations that inform environmental management decisions.
—Glenn Suter, Science Advisor, National Center for Environmental Assessment, U.S. EPA

Where the U.S. government is in need of effective and reliable environmental tools to guide leadership, Linkov and Moberg’s MCDA is a common sense approach to balance the science, social, behavior, and economic factors associated in making complex decisions—a true systems approach seeking to find an acceptable and sustainable state of equilibrium.
—Colonel Dionysios Anninos, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Staff

… an excellent resource for researchers, practitioners, teachers and students interested in the use of formal decision analysis methods in environmental policy. The case study format allows the reader to grapple with the different methods and the associated software in context, the explanations are clear but sophisticated, and the discussion questions are crafted to encourage real student engagement …
—Timothy F. Malloy, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

The book is a valuable complementary addition to textbooks on the topic as it provides a very easy to follow presentation of the main methods. The approach is based on working through case studies using the DECERNS software. I am sure that practitioners will find this book a very helpful first step into the practice of the methodology.
—Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Professor, Aalto University, Finland

I like how it gives a non-partisan treatment of all the different techniques, how it demonstrates them all on comparable problems so that it is easy for the reader to keep straight what is different and what is similar, and that the case problems themselves are realistic so it is clear how one might use this in practice.
—Jeffrey M. Keisler, President Elect, INFORMS Decision Analysis Society and Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston

In our society, environment is a ‘common good’. That is why stakeholders and citizens seek for more transparency and accountability within decision processes. The authors have offered us a set of practical experiences and have contributed to popularize multi-criteria decision analysis methods and tools by respecting the difficult equilibrium between conceptual/technical precisions and operational validation. This book will be a precious document for practitioners, regulators, researchers and students.
—Myriam Merad, PhD, National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risk (INERIS), France

This book describes methods and applications of multi-criteria decision analysis. But it goes beyond models and theory to provide case studies and discussions of multi-criteria decision analysis applied in specific—and varying—circumstances. The book provides tools. It also inspires creative thought by offering examples that can be a springboard for policy makers and other decision makers to think about its relevance and utility in the many circumstances they face.
—From the Foreword by Lynn Scarlett, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior, Visiting Scholar, Resources for the Future

Editorial Reviews

Currently, the most important trend in environmental assessment is the increasing emphasis on informing the decision-making process. With this book, Igor Linkov and Emily Moberg provide a useful introduction to the most versatile tool for linking estimates of risks or impacts with the many other considerations that inform environmental management decisions.
—Glenn Suter, Science Advisor, National Center for Environmental Assessment, U.S. EPA

Where the U.S. government is in need of effective and reliable environmental tools to guide leadership, Linkov and Moberg’s MCDA is a common sense approach to balance the science, social, behavior, and economic factors associated in making complex decisions—a true systems approach seeking to find an acceptable and sustainable state of equilibrium.
—Colonel Dionysios Anninos, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Staff

… an excellent resource for researchers, practitioners, teachers and students interested in the use of formal decision analysis methods in environmental policy. The case study format allows the reader to grapple with the different methods and the associated software in context, the explanations are clear but sophisticated, and the discussion questions are crafted to encourage real student engagement …
—Timothy F. Malloy, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

The book is a valuable complementary addition to textbooks on the topic as it provides a very easy to follow presentation of the main methods. The approach is based on working through case studies using the DECERNS software. I am sure that practitioners will find this book a very helpful first step into the practice of the methodology.
—Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Professor, Aalto University, Finland

I like how it gives a non-partisan treatment of all the different techniques, how it demonstrates them all on comparable problems so that it is easy for the reader to keep straight what is different and what is similar, and that the case problems themselves are realistic so it is clear how one might use this in practice.
—Jeffrey M. Keisler, President Elect, INFORMS Decision Analysis Society and Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston

In our society, environment is a ‘common good’. That is why stakeholders and citizens seek for more transparency and accountability within decision processes. The authors have offered us a set of practical experiences and have contributed to popularize multi-criteria decision analysis methods and tools by respecting the difficult equilibrium between conceptual/technical precisions and operational validation. This book will be a precious document for practitioners, regulators, researchers and students.
—Myriam Merad, PhD, National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risk (INERIS), France

This book describes methods and applications of multi-criteria decision analysis. But it goes beyond models and theory to provide case studies and discussions of multi-criteria decision analysis applied in specific—and varying—circumstances. The book provides tools. It also inspires creative thought by offering examples that can be a springboard for policy makers and other decision makers to think about its relevance and utility in the many circumstances they face.
—From the Foreword by Lynn Scarlett, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior, Visiting Scholar, Resources for the Future

From the Publisher