Multiple Criterion Synchronisation for Conservation Area Network Design: The Use of Non-Dominated Alternative Sets

Abstract

"This article shows how a standard technique from multiple-criteria decision making, the computation of non-dominated alternative sets, can be adapted to incorporate non-biological criteria such as socio-political ones during the design of bio-diversity conservation area networks. There are three chief advantages of this approach: (a) unlike almost all other methods for incorporating multiple criteria in decision making, this technique avoids making arbitrary utility assignments to alternative; (b) it only requires comparative rankings of alternatives under the criteria to be synchronized; and (c) it often results in several alternative of equal status, leaving a further choice to be made by political decision-making bodies. This allows those bodies to bring into consideration criteria that cannot be satisfactorily formally modeled. The use of this method demonstrated using a data set from Texas, one from Ecuador and two artificially constructed data sets."