Status of the Multi-Criteria Decision Support System
ONEforest is developing a Multi-Criteria Decision Support System (MCDSS) based on methods from operations research, for direct and immediate use by stakeholders. The MCDSS includes ecological, economic, and social target indicators. It is able to make the interlinkages detected in the system dynamic (SD) approach visible for stakeholders as decision-making trade-offs between the target indicators, ultimately presenting and aligning regionally prioritised management goals with suitable silvicultural concepts while visualising the impact of stakeholder decision-making on the forest-wood value chains (FWVC). The MCDSS which is delivered as a software application will allow stakeholders to try out different approaches and understand the consequences of their decisions.
Firstly, the ONEforest partners developed a mathematical basic model that represents the fundamentals of the multicriteria decision problem in a prototypical development environment. This includes the integration of some important indicators, objectives, and stands - these are being expanded in the course of the project - and allows the assignment of management options to areas of the regions at hand.
In the next step, the project partners requested the possibility of integrating decision support regarding the choice of harvesting methods into the model. A first approach was therefore implemented.
Additionally, the model has also been further developed in such a way that spatial relationships can be represented. This allows the integration of constraints that are based on the neighborhood of the cells of a region. Furthermore, to enable closeness to reality, it was also taken into account that some indicators may be subject to uncertainties and thus, depending on the uncertainty scenario considered, may take on different values.
