Decision Analysis

Sustainable management of urban pollution: an integrated approach

by Giovanni Leonardi

Ranking of Strategic Plans in Balanced Scorecard by Using Electre Method

by Javad Dodangeh

In a growing competitive business environment, many organizations have taken by adoption the strategic planning... more In a growing competitive business environment, many organizations have taken by adoption the strategic planning approach to an effort for business excellence. Implementation of proper strategies plays a vital role for organizations' success. Balanced scorecard is a suitable tool for designing operational strategies. However, one of the balanced scorecard problems is the selection in strategic plans' performance. In this paper, was settled a model for selection of strategic plans in Balanced Scorecard using Electre method. So first using the consensus of organization's managers and experts' opinions, measures of four perspectives and general objectives are determined in BSC. And then using experts' opinions and taking the relative importance of decision makers' opinions into consideration, by using Electre1, the performances of strategic plans are selected in BSC model. The results are shown that the introduced method is more reliable and acceptable and the experts were verified the model for selecting of strategic plans in BSC in operation. The introduced method was used in a study and extracted results from it were analyzed from different points of view. In this article Initiative is called strategic plans.

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard, Initiatives, MCDM, ELECTRE

Development of a framework for integrated health impact analysis of geoenvironmental pollution

by Giovanni Leonardi

What to do in the face of multiple threats? Incorporating dependencies within a return on investment framework for conservation

by Megan Evans

Megan C. Evans, Hugh P. Possingham, Kerrie A. Wilson (2011) Diversity and Distributions

Abstract

Aim  Our study aimed to determine priority areas for conservation investment with explicit... more Abstract

Aim  Our study aimed to determine priority areas for conservation investment with explicit consideration of the impacts of multiple threatening processes, and the dependencies that exist between actions required to abate these threats.

Location  Australia.

Methods  We analysed the return on investment for two different management actions aimed at reducing the impact of invasive species on the native fauna and flora of Australia. We focussed on the management of the European red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) at two spatial scales: across 72 biogeographic regions of Australia and within one high-priority biogeographic region. We considered each action independently and also explicitly accounted for the option of an integrated fox and rabbit management action. We accounted for the spatial distributions of the threatened species within our analysis and determined how this refined spatial information influenced both the priority areas and the timing of this investment.

Results  Integrated fox and rabbit management was identified as a higher priority than singular threat abatement in most bioregions, whereas rabbit control alone was the most frequent priority if dependencies between actions were ignored. At the regional scale, funding was entirely directed to integrated action when seven or more species within the priority region were impacted by more than one threat. The total allocation of funding and timing of initial investment remained relatively insensitive to differences in the spatial overlap of species distributions.

Main conclusions  Our findings indicate that prioritizing conservation actions without explicit consideration of the impacts of multiple threats can reduce the cost-effectiveness of investments. The benefits expected from investment in abating one threat alone may be overestimated where other processes continue to threaten species persistence. We conclude that future attention should be directed to refining our understanding of the cost-efficiencies delivered through integrated actions and institutional mechanisms to achieve their delivery.