%0 Articles
%T Developing decision support in participatory strategic forest planning in Metsähallitus
%A Hiltunen, Veikko
%D 2012
%J Dissertationes Forestales
%V 2012
%N 141
%R doi:10.14214/df.141
%U http://dissertationesforestales.fi/article/1924
%X The aim of this thesis was to develop new decision support for strategic forest planning in Metsähallitus, called natural resources planning (NRP), especially for supporting the participatory stakeholder group work. Until now the group’s work has been based mainly on discussions and negotiations in the group on the subjects to be processed. Cardinal decision support methods, such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) or interactive decision analysis (IDA) have also been applied to support the group’s decision making.

Direct holistic evaluation of alternative plans and use of voting methods were studied in sub-study I, combined use of voting methods and IDA in sub-study II, and use of MESTA decision-support tool in sub-study III. Sub-studies I-III were integrated into ongoing NRP processes. Effects of the top-down planning approach to the efficiency of forest use on the whole Metsähallitus level were examined in sub-study IV, as well as acceptability of its results on the regional level. In these analyses the results of the top-down approach were compared to the results of the currently applied bottom-up approach. In sub-study IV, data of earlier NRP processes were utilized.

The results show that decision support should be applied in adaptive way in NRP. For the participation it is also important that the applied methods and tools are transparent, easy to understand and easy to use. In NRP, the solution can often be found with help of voting methods, which operate on ordinal scale and are easy to understand and use. Approval voting (AV) proved suitable for selecting decision criteria, Borda Count in eliciting preferences and Multicriteria approval (MA) in evaluation of the alternatives. When necessary, deeper analysis can be carried out by cardinal methods like IDA. Applied after the use of voting methods, IDA was felt rather easy to understand and use by the participants. MESTA tool proved also to be applicable in supporting the group decision making. Results of the direct holistic evaluation, in turn, showed that it does not provide any additional support for the stakeholder group work. Hierarchical analyses indicated that there are possibilities for deeper integration of the whole Metsähallitus level goals into the regional NRPs. To be implemented, participation at the Metsähallitus level needs to be introduced, NRP process revised and planning tools further developed.