Making Decisions In Natural Environments

"This report surveys the field of naturalistic decision making (NDM) and shows its potential for supporting the needs of the U.S. Army. The report is written from the perspective of a researcher who has been active in developing models and methods in this new approach. The objective is to show the value of NDM for helping the Army address current challenges, including its use of information technologies, its need to downsize forces, and a change in its expected missions."--P. iii.

"This report surveys the field of naturalistic decision making (NDM) and shows its potential for supporting the needs of the U.S. Army. The report is written from the perspective of a researcher who has been active in developing models and methods in this new approach. The objective is to show the value of NDM for helping the Army address current challenges, including its use of information technologies, its need to downsize forces, and a change in its expected missions."--P. iii.

With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.

This book outlines the creative process of making environmental management decisions using the approach called Structured Decision Making. It is a short introductory guide to this popular form of decision making and is aimed at environmental managers and scientists. This is a distinctly pragmatic label given to ways for helping individuals and groups think through tough multidimensional choices characterized by uncertain science, diverse stakeholders, and difficult tradeoffs. This is the everyday reality of environmental management, yet many important decisions currently are made on an ad hoc basis that lacks a solid value-based foundation, ignores key information, and results in selection of an inferior alternative. Making progress – in a way that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible and transparent – requires combining analytical methods drawn from the decision sciences and applied ecology with deliberative insights from cognitive psychology, facilitation and negotiation. The authors review key methods and discuss case-study examples based in their experiences in communities, boardrooms, and stakeholder meetings. The goal of this book is to lay out a compelling guide that will change how you think about making environmental decisions. Visit www.wiley.com/go/gregory/ to access the figures and tables from the book.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of several federal agencies responsible for protecting Americans against significant risks to human health and the environment. As part of that mission, EPA estimates the nature, magnitude, and likelihood of risks to human health and the environment; identifies the potential regulatory actions that will mitigate those risks and protect public health1 and the environment; and uses that information to decide on appropriate regulatory action. Uncertainties, both qualitative and quantitative, in the data and analyses on which these decisions are based enter into the process at each step. As a result, the informed identification and use of the uncertainties inherent in the process is an essential feature of environmental decision making. EPA requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convene a committee to provide guidance to its decision makers and their partners in states and localities on approaches to managing risk in different contexts when uncertainty is present. It also sought guidance on how information on uncertainty should be presented to help risk managers make sound decisions and to increase transparency in its communications with the public about those decisions. Given that its charge is not limited to human health risk assessment and includes broad questions about managing risks and decision making, in this report the committee examines the analysis of uncertainty in those other areas in addition to human health risks. Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty explains the statement of task and summarizes the findings of the committee.

Environmental Dilemmas focuses on the ethical problems and dilemmas that emerge in place-based professional practices_architecture, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and construction management. Mugerauer and Manzo connect decision-making to major ethical theories, principles, and rules, and professional codes of ethics.

This book integrates decision-making and environmental science. For ecologists it will bridge the gap to economics. For practitioners in environmental economics and management it will be a major reference book. It probably contains the largest collection available of expressions and basic equations that are used in environmental sciences. The book is organized in disciplines, but it also includes 13 applications that draw on all subjects in the book, and where cross-references are extensively used. The applications show how a range of topics in economics, social sciences and ecology are interrelated when decisions have to be made.

This book explores the challenges that confront leaders in government and industry when making decisions in the areas of environmental health and safety. Today, decision making demands transparency, robustness, and resiliency. However thoughtfully they are devised, decisions made by governments and enterprises can often trigger immediate, passionate public response. Expertise Under Scrutiny shows how leaders can establish organizational decision making processes that yield valid, workable choices even in fast-changing and uncertain conditions. The first part of the book examines the organizational decision making process, describing the often-contentious environment in which important environmental health and safety decisions are made, and received. The authors review the roles of actors and experts in the decision making process. The book goes on to address such topics as: · The roles of actors and experts in the decision making process · Ethics and analytics as drivers of good decisions · Why managing problems in safety, security, environment, and health Part II offers an outline for adopting a formal decision support structure, including the use of decision support tools. It includes a chapter devoted to ELECTRE (ELimination and Choice Expressing Reality), a multi-criteria decision analysis system. The book concludes with an insightful appraisal and analysis of the expertise, structure and resources needed for navigating well-supported, risk-informed decisions in our 21st Century world. Expertise Under Scrutiny benefits a broad audience of students, academics, researchers, and working professionals in management and related disciplines, especially in the field of environmental health and safety.