The water resource planning process in California is characterized by many decision makers and by multiple-level objectives. Environmental planning, however, is often based on fixed or independently designed decision-making. This restricted consideration of values and alternatives, reflecting and serving an organization's own interests, may not be at all effective in responding to environmental quality considerations. This research, therefore, was an effort to develop a dynamic support system responsive to the differing goals embodied in risk assessment for multi-objective environmental planning. A set of prescriptive techniques provided the framework for an adaptive decision-making tool that combines environmental and value understanding. By integrating surface water data and differing value systems and combining attribute and spatial analysis, environmental risks were quantified and the variation or similarity between group objectives measured. These differences and similarities were placed into the overall priority strategy of risk assessment and value systems to help bridge the differences in goals and values presently separating these groups from coming to a consensus for environmental planning and decision making. At the end was the creation of a dynamic, involving, adaptive system that marries research and management through the implementation of environmental indicators, an assignment of quantitative weights and regard for values.
Carrie Salazar
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: 510-841-6150
Fax: 510-254-0955
Email: salazar@ced.berkeley.edu