Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
EPA has substantially contributed to the advancement of analytic tech-
niques and tools to detect environmental stressors and characterize health and
ecosystem impacts of those stressors. While better characterization of problems
is important, it is critical that the agency apply this knowledge to primary pre-
vention—that is, the design of safer and more sustainable forms of production
and consumption. Like sustainability, a focus on solutions should be more than a
simple mission statement. It must be linked to adequate resources, tools, and
infrastructure at the highest levels of the agency.
Multiple-Criteria and Multidimensional Decision-Making
The tools of alternatives assessment, HIA, and the sustainability manage-
ment approach all incorporate an array of information to arrive at a preferred
solution, but this becomes increasingly challenging given numerous dimensions
that often cannot be compared on the same scale. Benefit-cost analysis is a well-
known example in which the multiple outcomes of a decision are monetized (if
possible) and aggregated into a single indicator of economic efficiency, but it
cannot provide a complete ranking of alternatives if stakeholders and environ-
mental decision-makers are interested in other objectives (such as fairness across
income classes, regions, or racial groups; generations in the distribution of bur-
dens and benefits; or norms in the treatment of nonhuman organisms). Benefit-
cost analysis is useful and sometimes mandated for regulatory impact assess-
ments, but its value is limited in dealing with complex issues in which economic
efficiency is only one of many important objectives for environmental decision-
makers and their stakeholders. While deliberative approaches may be warranted
in complex situations, especially when both quantitative and qualitative informa-
tion are being used, analytic approaches to integrate data from multiple sources
and types into a single number or range of numbers have tremendous potential.
One approach to solving problems that have multiple incommensurate di-
mensions is to use tools within the realm of multiple-criteria decision-making
(MCDM) (Figueira et al 2005). Within the broad framework of informatics, de-
veloping and applying MCDM in conjunction with uncertainty analysis and
data-mining (Shi et al. 2002) can provide a set of useful ways for using emerg-
ing science and developing evidence-supported policy-making in the agency.
Like benefit-cost analysis, MCDM is an approach that creates and assigns a
preference index to rank policy options on the basis of the totality of all adopted
criteria. However, unlike benefit-cost analysis, MCDM was not designed to
rank options based on a consumer's preference for environmental or other
goods. Instead, the method is flexible for selecting weights and it is often de-
signed to use weights assigned by the decision-maker. This flexibility allows for
the inclusion of a broader set of objectives, although the selection can be inher-
ently contentious. The preference index value attributable to each criterion re-
flects the nature and importance of the criterion, for example, cost, benefits,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search