The goal of Kangas, Kangas and Kurttila's Decision Support for Forest Management is to provide students and researchers with a toolbox of methods for approaching the different planning situations that may arise in practice. It draws together a wide range of methods used in planning forest management regimes and presents a systematic overview of current methodological approaches.

While earlier books concerning forest planning have tended to focus on linear programming, economic aspects, or specific multi-criteria decision aid tools, this book provides a much broader range of tools to meet a variety of planning situations. The methods themselves cover a range of decision situations - from cases involving single decision makers, through group decision making, to participatory planning. They include traditional decision support tools, from optimization to utility functions, as well as methods that are just gaining ground in forest planning - such as problem structuring methods and social choice theory.

Including examples which illustrate the application of each technique to specific management planning problems, the book offers an invaluable resource for both researchers and advanced students specializing in management and planning issues relating to forestry.

Inhalt

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. 1.1 Planning and decision support. 1.2 Forest management planning. 1.3 History of forest planning.- Discrete problems. 2. Unidimensional problems. 2.1 Decisions under risk and uncertainty. 2.2 Measuring utility and value. 2.2.1 Estimating a utility function. 2.2.2 Estimating a value function.- 3. Multi-criteria decision problems. 3.1 Theoretical aspects. 3.2 Multi-attribute utility functions. 3.2.1 Function forms. 3.2.2 Basis for estimating the weights. 3.2.3 SMART. 3.3 Even Swaps. 3.4 Analytic hierarchy process. 3.4.1 Decision problem. 3.4.2 Phases of AHP. 3.4.3 Uncertainty in AHP. 3.4.4 ANP. 3.5 A'WOT.- 4. Uncertainty in multi-criteria decision making. 4.1 Nature of uncertainty. 4.2 Fuzzy set theory. 4.2.1 Membership functions and fuzzy numbers. 4.2.2 Fuzzy goals in decision making. 4.2.3 Fuzzy additive weighting. 4.3 Possibility theory in decision making. 4.4 Evidence theory. 4.5 Outranking methods. 4.5.1 Outline. 4.5.2 PROMETHEE method. 4.5.3 ELECTRE method. 4.5.4 Other outranking methods. 4.6 Probabilistic uncertainty in decision analysis. 4.6.1 Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA). 4.6.2 SMAA-O. 4.6.3 Pairwise probabilities.- Continuous problems. 5. Optimization. 5.1 Linear programming. 5.1.1 Primal problem. 5.1.2 Dual problem. 5.1.3 Forest planning problem with several stands. 5.1.4 JLP software. 5.2 Goal programming. 5.3 Integer programming. 5.4 Uncertainty in optimization. 5.5 Robust portfolio modelling. 5.5.1 Principles of the method. 5.5.2 Use of RPM in forest planning.- 6. Heuristic optimization. 6.1 Principles. 6.2 Objective function forms. 6.3 HERO. 6.4 Simulated annealing and threshold accepting. 6.5 Tabu search. 6.6 Genetic algorithms. 6.7 Improving the heuristic search. 6.7.1 Parameters of heuristic optimisation techniques. 6.7.2 Expanding the neighbourhood. 6.7.3 Combining optimisation techniques.- Cases with several decision makers. 7. Group decision making and participatory planning. 7.1 Decision makers and stakeholders. 7.2 Public participation process. 7.2.1 Types of participation process. 7.2.2 Success of the participation process. 7.2.3 Defining the appropriate process. 7.3 Tools for eliciting the public preferences. 7.3.1 Surveys. 7.3.2 Public hearings. 7.4 Problem structuring methods. 7.4.1 Background. 7.4.2 Strategic options development and analysis (SODA). 7.4.3 Soft systems methodology (SSM). 7.5 Decision support for group decision making.- 8. Voting methods. 8.1 Social choice theory. 8.1.1 Outline. 8.1.2 Evaluation criteria for voting systems. 8.2 Positional voting schemes. 8.2.1 Plurality voting. 8.2.2 Approval voting. 8.2.3 Borda count. 8.3 Pairwise voting. 8.4 Fuzzy voting. 8.5 Probability voting. 8.6 Multicriteria approval. 8.6.1 Original method. 8.6.2 Fuzzy MA. 8.6.3 Multicriteria approval voting.- Application viewpoints. 9. Behavioural aspects. 9.1 Criticism towards decision theory. 9.1.1 Outline. 9.1.2 Satisficing or maximizing?. 9.1.3 Rules or rational behaviour?. 9.2 Image theory. 9.3 Prospect theory.- 10. Practical examples of using MCDS methods. 10.1 Landscape ecological planning. 10.2 Participatory planning. 10.3 Spatial objectives and heuristic optimisation in practical forest planning.- 11. Final remarks.-