Structured Decision Making
A Practical Guide to Environmental Management Choices
By: Robin Gregory, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Tim McDaniels, Dan Ohlson
Published: March 27, 2012
Format: Paperback, 312 pages
ISBN-10: 1444333429
ISBN-13: 978-1444333428
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
"This book is about decisions. More specifically, it is about making decisions concerning the management of environmental resources", write Senior Researcher, Decision Research, Robin Gregory; Principals at Compass Resource Management, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Dan Ohlson; and Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Ti McDaniels, in their multidisciplinary and very practical book Structured Decision Making: A Practical Guide to Environmental Management Choices. The authors describe a framework for making good decisions regarding activities that may influence use or protection of natural resources, in the form of an approach called Structured Decision Making or SDM.
Robin Gregory, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Tim McDaniels, and Dan Ohlson recognize that while the context in which decisions are made may vary, there are a set of best practices for effective environmental decision making. The authors point out that there is a growing consensus as to the basic outline of what constitutes a responsible decision making process. The authors introduce a framework for thinking about and addressing challenging environmental choices through Structured Decision Making (SDM). The SDM concept is a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes the analytical methods of decision sciences and applied ecology, with ideas from cognitive psychology and experience of practitioners.
Robin Gregory, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Tim McDaniels, Dan Ohlson understand the necessity of a repeatable process for guiding decision makers in resolving difficult environmental problems. The best practices outlined in the SDM approach provide a theoretical and practical method for gathering information and developing innovative solutions to problems in environmental management. The approach is valuable for groups of people working together to achieve workable solutions through a framing methodology that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible, and transparent.
The authors divide their book into a series of chapters that address the following aspects of SDM:
* Structuring environmental management choices
* Foundations of structured decision making
* Decision sketching
* Understanding objectives
* Identifying performance measures
* Incorporating uncertainty
* Creating alternatives
* Characterizing consequences
* Making trade-offs
* Learning
* Reality check: Implementation
For me, the power of the book is how Robin Gregory, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Tim McDaniels, Dan Ohlson combine both the theoretical framework of SDM, with the practical steps to utilizing it effectively in any environmental management situation. The authors go beyond simply offering a how to manual, and include the important background to why the decision making process works in both theory and practice. The author take a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to SMD to ensure that the problem is addressed from the many different perspectives of the stakeholders.
The author dispense with the need for understanding advanced mathematics or complicated technical tools or skills. Instead, they provide an approach that can be understood and applied readily by any groups, organizations, governments, or businesses facing any environmental management problems. The book also contains a group of informative case studies, including ones where the result was failure, to illustrate the use of the SMD process at work in the real world.
I highly recommend the groundbreaking and very accessible book Structured Decision Making: A Practical Guide to Environmental Management Choices by Robin Gregory, Lee Failing, Michael Harstone, Graham Long, Tim McDaniels, Dan Ohlson, to anyone in resource management, risk analysis, land use planning, industry leadership, environmental NGOs, facilitation and negotiation, government, policy making, academia, and undergraduate or graduate studies who is seeking a clear and concise approach to developing workable solutions to even the most challenging environmental problems.
This book is a must for anyone who is serious about resolving environmental problems in an inclusive, rigorous, defensible, and transparent manner.
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