Does MODSS offer an alternative to traditional approaches to natural resource management decision-making?

There is an increasing awareness, on the part of decision-makers, of the need to develop new or to extend traditional evaluation techniques to facilitate a multidisciplinary and participatory approach to decision-making. Such an approach would be particularly appropriate for decision-making with respect to the management of natural resources. Not only are there multiple objectives involved but also many of the identified objectives are competing and conflicting. Traditional techniques to assist decision-making which focus on establishing the economic efficiency of an investment or management decision, do not pay sufficient attention to providing information about the nature and extent of the trade-offs involved. This article presents a multiple objective decision-support system (MODSS) which was developed to assist decision-making for a catchment in Far North Queensland. The MODSS approach is shown to be a process, capable of incorporating information from a number of disciplines as well as the preferences of identified groups of stakeholders, to support the prioritisation of options to manage land and water resources