Flood Risk Management Policy in the Upper Tisza Basin: A System Analytical Approach. Simulation and Analysis of Three Flood Management Strategies

This report describes an integrated flood catastrophe model as well as some results of a case study made in the upper Tisza region in northeastern Hungary: the Palad-Csecsei basin (the pilot basin). The background data was provided through the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and complemented by interviews with different stakeholders in the region. Based upon these data, where a large degree of uncertainty is prevailing, we demonstrate how an implementation of a simulation and decision analytical model can provide insights into the effects of imposing different policy options for a flood risk management program in the region. We focus herein primarily on general options for designing a public-private insurance and reinsurance system for Hungary. Obviously, this is a multi-criteria and multi-stakeholder problem and cannot be solved using standard approaches. It should however be emphasized that the main purpose of this report is not to provide any definite recommendations, but rather to explore a set of policy packages that could gain a consensus among the stakeholders

Deliberation, Representation, Equity: Research Approaches, Tools and Algorithms for Participatory Processes

What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences

Web: www.iiasa.ac.at Flood Risk Management Policy in the Upper Tisza Basin: A System Analytical Approach Simulation and Analysis of Three Flood Management Strategies

Interim Reports on work of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis receive only limited review. Views or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the Institute, its National Member Organizations, or other organizations supporting the work

Cultural Heritage Preservation and Territorial Attractiveness: A Spatial Multidimensional Evaluation Approach

The introduction of the concept of sustainable development in the field of cultural heritage preservation has stressed the importance of a holistic approach. Achieving a balance among cultural significance retention and economic development is a challenging goal, even more for fragile and vulnerable contexts with limited economic and social resources, low return expectations and a huge tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Given such a complexity decisions about where to place valorisation interventions with the purpose to activate synergies with existing projects and trigger economic and social development processes require to be based on robust evaluation methodologies. According to this instance, Spatial Multicriteria Analysis (SMCA) can support decision-makers along all the steps of the decision process, moving from the intelligence phase to the design and, finally, to the choice one. Within this approach, the study has been focused on the intelligence phase, in order to define a multidimensional analytical framework aimed at mapping widespread cultural heritage with a special attention to its territorial features. The proposed methodological evaluation framework points out the challenge of structuring a deci- sion problem related to the inner areas regeneration by the reuse of cultural heritage placed along slow mobility routes. The results are value maps that provide recommendations for placing culture heritage preservation and reuse interventions, meant as territorial catalyst

Multicriteria Decision Making for Healthcare Facilities Location with Visualization Based on FITradeoff Method

This paper proposes an application of the Flexible Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) method for siting healthcare facilities. The selection of the location of complex facilities, as hospitals, can be considered as a multidimensional decision problem for the several issues to be taken into account and, moreover, for the variety of stakeholders that should be involved. The case study under investigation is the location of “La Città della Salute”, a new large healthcare facility in Lombardy Region (Italy). Starting from a cross disciplinary literature review, a multidimensional evaluation framework has been defined and applied to the case study by considering the point of view of one Decision Maker (DM). The application shows that a smaller effort is required from the DM using the FITradeoff method

Value-Based Decision Making : Decision Theory Meets e-Government

Electronic government, or e-Government, is the use of information and communication technology in the public sector. As a research field, it is characterized as multi-disciplinary with heritage from both the information systems and public administration fields. This diverse background may be beneficial, but it may also result in a fragmented theoretical base and conceptual vagueness. This paper applies decision theory to e-Government to tie a number of theoretical and practical concepts together. In particular, five concepts from decision theory (i.e. objectives, stakeholder inclusion, weighting and resource allocation, risk analysis, and outcomes assessment) are compared with counterparts in e-Government. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they add to and unite e-Government theory. Second, practical methods for operationalizing the theoretical concepts are proposed. This operationalization includes using a holistic approach to e-participation throughout decision processes