Harmonised Principles for Public Participation in Quality Assurance of Integrated Water Resources Modelling

The main purpose of public participation in integrated water resources modelling is to improve decision-making by ensuring that decisions are soundly based on shared knowledge, experience and scientific evidence. The present paper describes stakeholder involvement in the modelling process. The point of departure is the guidelines for quality assurance for `scientific` water resources modelling developed under the EU research project HarmoniQuA, which has developed a computer based Modelling Support Tool (MoST) to provide a user-friendly guidance and a quality assurance framework that aim for enhancing the credibility of river basin modelling. MoST prescribes interaction, which is a form of participation above consultation but below engagement of stakeholders and the public in the early phases of the modelling cycle and under review tasks throughout the process. MoST is a flexible tool which supports different types of users and facilitates interaction between modeller, manager and stakeholders. The perspective of using MoST for engagement of stakeholders e.g. higher level participation throughout the modelling process as part of integrated water resource management is evaluate

Integrated Assessment Modelling of Complexity in the New Zealand Farming Industry

As New Zealand farming industry pursues more productivity this has implication for environment and makes land use and agricultural policy decision processes more complex for which integrated assessment modeling (IAM) can support. The purpose of this review paper is to propose means through which IAM can be improved specifically to minimize uncertainties and increase relevance, reliability, and utility of outputs of different models. Literature suggests that the general motivation for land use change is that farmers do consider the environment, but need to maintain profitability. There are handful decision support tools for land use and land policy decisions but one common feature of most of the models is that each seems suitable for only a part of the complexity. An appropriate framework for linking different models in an integrated assessment is still needed. As integrated assessment often goes beyond an individual researcher‘s role, research institutions need to align their research portfolio across the dimensions of the complexity by creating an appropriate mechanism to integrate individual research into integrated assessments while individual researchers need to present modelling results in a compatible format for integration into another model‘s application.integrated assessment, modeling, complexity, farming industry, New Zealand, Agribusiness, Land Economics/Use,

On the role of pre and post-processing in environmental data mining

The quality of discovered knowledge is highly depending on data quality. Unfortunately real data use to contain noise, uncertainty, errors, redundancies or even irrelevant information. The more complex is the reality to be analyzed, the higher the risk of getting low quality data. Knowledge Discovery from Databases (KDD) offers a global framework to prepare data in the right form to perform correct analyses. On the other hand, the quality of decisions taken upon KDD results, depend not only on the quality of the results themselves, but on the capacity of the system to communicate those results in an understandable form. Environmental systems are particularly complex and environmental users particularly require clarity in their results. In this paper some details about how this can be achieved are provided. The role of the pre and post processing in the whole process of Knowledge Discovery in environmental systems is discussed

ADAPTS: An Intelligent Sustainable Conceptual Framework for Engineering Projects

This paper presents a conceptual framework for the optimization of environmental sustainability in engineering projects, both for products and industrial facilities or processes. The main objective of this work is to propose a conceptual framework to help researchers to approach optimization under the criteria of sustainability of engineering projects, making use of current Machine Learning techniques. For the development of this conceptual framework, a bibliographic search has been carried out on the Web of Science. From the selected documents and through a hermeneutic procedure the texts have been analyzed and the conceptual framework has been carried out. A graphic representation pyramid shape is shown to clearly define the variables of the proposed conceptual framework and their relationships. The conceptual framework consists of 5 dimensions; its acronym is ADAPTS. In the base are: (1) the Application to which it is intended, (2) the available DAta, (3) the APproach under which it is operated, and (4) the machine learning Tool used. At the top of the pyramid, (5) the necessary Sensing. A study case is proposed to show its applicability. This work is part of a broader line of research, in terms of optimization under sustainability criteria.Telefónica Chair “Intelligence in Networks” of the University of Seville (Spain

Network Analysis, Creative System Modelling and Decision Support: The NetSyMoD Approach

This paper presents the NetSyMoD approach – where NetSyMod stands for Network Analysis – Creative System Modelling – Decision Support. It represents the outcome of several years of research at FEEM in the field of natural resources management, environmental evaluation and decision-making, within the Natural Resources Management Research Programme. NetSyMoD is a flexible and comprehensive methodological framework, which uses a suite of support tools, aimed at facilitating the involvement of stakeholders or experts in decision-making processes. The main phases envisaged for the process are: (i) the identification of relevant actors, (ii) the analysis of social networks, (iii) the creative system modelling and modelling of the reality being considered (i.e. the local socio-economic and environmental system), and (iv) the analysis of alternative options available for the management of the specific case (e.g. alternative projects, plans, strategies). The strategies for participation are necessarily context-dependent, and thus not all the NetSyMod phases may be needed in every application. Furthermore, the practical solutions for their implementation may significantly differ from one case to another, depending not only on the context, but also on the available resources (human and financial). The various applications of NetSyMoD have nonetheless in common the same approach for problem analysis and communication within a group of actors, based upon the use of creative thinking techniques, the formalisation of human-environment relationships through the DPSIR framework, and the use of multi-criteria analysis through the mDSS software.Social Network, Integrated Analysis, Participatory Modelling, Decision Support