title: Aspects of decision support in water management--example Berlin and Potsdam (Germany) I--spatially differentiated evaluation.
abstract: Decisions about sustainable development demand spatially differentiated evaluations. As an example, we demonstrate the evaluation of water management strategies in the cities of Berlin and Potsdam (Germany) with respect to their ecological effects in 14 sections of the surface water system. Two decision support systems were compared, namely PROMETHEE, which is designed to obtain a clear decision (linear ranking), and Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT), normally providing more than one favourable solution (partial order). By PROMETHEE, the spatial differentiation had unwanted effects on the result, negating the stakeholders determined weighting of indicators. Therefore, the stakeholder can barely benefit from the convenience of obtaining a clear decision (linear ranking). In contrast, the result obtained by HDT was not influenced by spatial differentiation. Furthermore, HDT provided helpful tools to analyse the evaluation result, such as the concept of antagonistic indicators to discover conflicts in the evaluation process.
authors.affiliation: Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, D-12587 Berlin, Germany. simon@igb-berlin.de
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Simon
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Brüggemann
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pudenz
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005858:Germany; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid; D014873:Water Pollutants / Q000302:isolation & purification
chemical_list: D014873:Water Pollutants